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LETTERS    OF    MARQUE 


Rudyard  Kipling 
Photogravure  by  John  Andrew  &  Son  after  original  by  W    FCirkpatrick 


ifr  l*uxr  iEMtUm 


of 


Cfje 


Snatntt  — 


ONE  THOUSAND  IMPRESSIONS   HAVE  BEEN  TAKEN 
FOR  THIS   EDITION 


COPYRIGHT,  1909 
BY  THE  EDINBURGH  SeOIKTT 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 


Of  the  beginning  of  Things — Of  the  Taj  and 
the  Globe-Trotter — The  Young  Man  from 
Manchester  and  certain  More]  Reflections. 

EXCEPT  for  those  who,  under  compulsion 
of  a  sick  certificate,  are  flying  Bombay- 
wards,  it  is  good  for  every  man  to  see  some 
little  of  the  great  Indian  Empire  and  the 
strange  folk  who  move  about  it.  It  is  good  to 
escape  for  a  time  from  the  House  of  Rimmon 
— be  it  office  or  cutchery — and  to  go  abroad 
under  no  more  exacting  master  than  personal 
inclination,  and  with  no  more  definite  plan  of 
travel  than  has  the  horse,  escaped  from  pas- 
ture, free  upon  the  countryside.  The  first  re- 
sult of  such  freedom  is  extreme  bewilderment, 
and  the  second  reduces  the  freed  to  a  state  of 
mind  which,  for  his  sins,  must  be  the  normal 
portion  of  the  Globe-Trotter — the  man  who 
"does"  kingdoms  .  in  days  and  writes  books 
upon  them  in  weeks.  And  this  desperate 


2234873 


facility  is  not  as  strange  as  it  seems.  By  the 
time  that  an  Englishman  has  come  by  sea  and 
rail  via  America,  Japan,  Singapore,  and  Cey- 
lon to  India,  he  can — these  eyes  have  seen  him 
do  so — master  in  five  minutes  the  intricacies  of 
the  Indian  Bradshaw,  and  tell  an  old  resident 
exactly  how  and  where  the  trains  run.  Can 
we  wonder  that  the  intoxication  of  success  in 
hasty  assimilation  should  make  him  overbold, 
and  that  he  suould  try  to  grasp — but  a  full 
account  of  the  insolent  Globe-T rotter  must  be 
reserved.  He  is  worthy  of  a  book.  Given 
absolute  freedom  for  a  month  the  mind,  as  I 
have  said,  fails  to  take  in  the  situation  and, 
after  much  debate,  contents  itself  with  follow- 
ing in  old  and  well-beaten  ways — paths  that 
we  in  India  have  no  time  to  tread,  but  must 
leave  to  the  country  cousin  who  wears  his 
pagri  tail-fashion  down  his  back,  and  says 
"cabman"  to  the  driver  of  the  ticca-ghari. 

Now  Jeypore  from  the  Anglo-Indian  point 
of  view  is  a  station  on  the  Rajputana-Malwa 
line,  on  the  way  to  Bombay,  where  half  an 
hour  is  allowed  for  dinner,  and  where  there 
ought  to  be  more  protection  from  the  sun  than 
at  present  exists.  Some  few,  more  learned 
than  the  rest,  know  that  garnets  come  from 
Jeypore,  and  here  the  limits  of  our  wisdom  are 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  3 

set.  We  do  not,  to  quote  the  Calcutta  shop- 
keeper, come  out  "for  the  good  of  our  'ealth," 
and  what  touring  we  accomplish  is  for  the 
most  part  off  the  line  of  rail. 

For  these  reasons,  and  because  he  wished  to 
study  our  winter  birds  of  passage,  one  of  the 
few  thousand  Englishmen  in  India,  on  a  date 
and  in  a  place  which  have  no  concern  with  the 
story,  sacrificed  all  his  self-respect  and  became 
— at  enormous  personal  inconvenience — a 
Globe-Trotter  going  to  Jeypore,  and  leaving 
behind  him  for  a  little  while  all  that  old  well- 
known  life  in  which  Commissioners  and 
Deputy  Commissioners,  Governors  and  Lieu- 
tenant-Governors,  Aides-de-Camp,  Colonels 
and  their  wives,  Majors,  Captains  and  Subal- 
terns after  their  kind  move  and  rule  and 
govern  and  squabble  and  fight  and  sell  each 
other's  horses,  and  tell  wicked  stories  of  their 
neighbours.  But  before  he  had  fully  settled 
into  his  part  or  accustomed  himself  to  saying 
"Please  take  out  this  luggage"  to  the  coolies 
at  the  stations,  he  saw  from  the  train  the  Taj 
wrapped  in  the  mists  of  the  morning. 

There  is  a  story  of  a  Frenchman  "who 
feared  not  God,  nor  regarded  man,"  sailing  to 
Egypt  for  the  express  purpose  of  scoffing  at 
the  Pyramids  and — though  this  is  hard  to  be- 


4  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

lieve — at  the  great  Napoleon  who  had  warred 
under  their  shadow!  It  is  on  record  that  that 
Blasphemous  Gaul  came  to  the  Great  Pyramid 
and  wept  through  mingled  reverence  and  con- 
trition, for  he  sprang  from  an  emotional  race. 
To  understand  his  feelings,  it  is  necessary  to 
have  read  a  great  deal  too  much  about  the  Taj, 
its  design  and  proportions,  to  have  seen  ex- 
ecrable pictures  of  it  at  the  Simla  Fine  Arts 
Exhibition,  to  have  had  its  praises  sung  by 
superior  and  travelled  friends  till  the  brain 
loathed  the  repetition  of  the  word,  and  then, 
sulky  with  want  of  sleep,  heavy-eyed,  un- 
washen  and  chilled,  to  come  upon  it  suddenly. 
Under  these  circumstances  everything,  you 
will  concede,  is  in  favour  of  a  cold,  critical  and 
not  too  impartial  verdict.  As  the  Englishman 
leaned  out  of  the  carriage  he  saw  first  an  opal- 
tinted  cloud  on  the  horizon,  and  later  certain 
towers.  The  mists  lay  on  the  ground,  so  that 
the  splendour  seemed  to  be  floating  free  of  the 
earth;  and  the  mists  rose  in  the  background, 
so  that  at  no  time  could  everything  be  seen 
clearly.  Then  as  the  train  sped  forward,  and 
the  mists  shifted  and  the  sun  shone  upon  the 
mists,  the  Taj  took  a  hundred  new  shapes,  each 
perfect  and  beyond  description.  It  was  the 
Ivory  Gate  through  which  all  good  dreams 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  5 

come;  it  was  the  realization  of  the  "glimmer- 
ing halls  of  dawn"  that  Tennyson  sings  of;  it 
was  veritably  the  "aspiration  fixed,"  the  "sigh 
made  stone"  of  a  lesser  poet;  and  over  and 
above  concrete  comparisons,  it  seemed  the 
embodiment  of  all  things  pure,  all  things  holy 
and  all  things  unhappy.  That  was  the  mystery 
of  the  building.  It  may  be  that  the  mists 
wrought  the  witchery,  and  that  the  Taj  seen 
in  the  dry  sunlight  is  only  as  guide  books  say 
a  noble  structure.  The  Englishman  could  not 
tell,  and  has  made  a  vow  that  he  will  never  go 
nearer  the  spot  for  fear  of  breaking  the  charm 
of  the  unearthly  pavilions. 

It  may  be,  too,  that  each  must  view  the  Taj 
for  himself  with  his  own  eyes ;  working  out  his 
own  interpretation  of  the  sight.  It  is  certain 
that  no  man  can  in  cold  blood  and  colder  ink 
set  down  his  impressions  if  he  has  been  in  the 
least  moved. 

To  the  one  who  watched  and  wondered  that 
November  morning  the  thing  seemed  full  of 
sorrow — the  sorrow  of  the  man  who  built  it 
for  the  woman  he  loved,  and  the  sorrow  of 
the  workmen  who  died  in  the  building — used 
up  like  cattle.  And  in  the  face  of  this  sorrow 
the  Taj  flushed  in  the  sunlight  and  was  beauti- 
ful, after  the  beauty  of  a  woman  who  has  done 
no  wrong. 


6  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

Here  the  train  ran  in  under  the  walls  of 
Agra  Fort,  and  another  train — of  thought  in- 
coherent as  that  written  above — came  to  an 
end.  Let  those  who  scoff  at  overmuch  enthu- 
siasm look  at  the  Taj  and  thenceforward  be 
dumb.  It  is  well  on  the  threshold  of  a  journey 
to  be  taught  reverence  and  awe. 

But  there  is  no  reverence  in  the  Globe-Trot- 
ter :  he  is  brazen.  A  Young  Man  from  Man- 
chester was  travelling  to  Bombay  in  order — 
how  the  words  hurt! — to  be  home  by  Christ- 
mas. He  had  come  through  America,  New 
Zealand,  and  Australia,  and  finding  that  he 
had  ten  days  to  spare  at  Bombay,  conceived 
the  modest  idea  of  "doing  India."  "I  don't 
say  that  I've  done  it  all ;  but  you  may  say  that 
I've  seen  a  good  deal."  Then  he  explained  that 
he  had  been  "much  pleased"  at  Agra,  "much 
pleased"  at  Delhi  and,  last  profanation,  "very 
much  pleased"  at  the  Taj.  Indeed  he  seemed 
to  be  going  through  life  just  then  "much 
pleased"  at  everything.  With  rare  and  spark- 
ling originality  he  remarked  that  India  was  a 
"big  place,"  and  that  there  were  many  things 
to  buy.  Verily,  this  Young  Man  must  have 
been  a  delight  to  the  Delhi  boxwallahs.  He 
had  purchased  shawls  and  embroidery  "to  the 
tune  of"  a  certain  number  of  rupees  duly  set 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  7 

forth,  and  he  had  purchased  jewellery  to  an- 
other tune.  These  were  gifts  for  friends  at 
home,  and  he  considered  them  "very  Eastern." 
If  silver  filigree  work  modelled  on  Palais 
Royal  patterns,  or  aniline  blue  scarves  be 
"Eastern,"  he  had  succeeded  in  his  heart's  de- 
sire. For  some  inscrutable  end  it  has  been  de- 
creed that  man  shall  take  a  delight  in  making 
his  fellow-man  miserable.  The  Englishman 
began  to  point  out  gravely  the  probable  extent 
to  which  the  Young  Man  from  Manchester 
had  been  swindled,  and  the  Young  Man  said : 
— "By  Jove !  You  don't  say  so.  I  hate  being 
done!  If  there's  anything  I  hate  it's  being 
done!" 

He  had  been  so  happy  in  the  "thought  of 
getting  home  by  Christmas,"  and  so  charm- 
ingly communicative  as  to  the  members  of  his 
family  for  whom  such  and  such  gifts  were  in- 
tended, that  the  Englishman  cut  short  the 
record  of  fraud  and  soothed  him  by  saying 
that  he  had  not  been  so  very  badly  "done" 
after  all.  This  consideration  was  misplaced, 
for,  his  peace  of  mind  restored,  the  Young 
Man  from  Manchester  looked  out  of  the  win- 
dow and,  waving  his  hand  over  the  Empire 
generally,  said: — "I  say,  Look  here!  All 
those  wells  are  wrong  you  know."  The  wells 


8  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

were  on  the  wheel  and  inclined  plane  system; 
but  he  objected  to  the  incline,  and  said  that  it 
would  be  much  better  for  the  bullocks  if  they 
walked  on  level  ground.  Then  light  dawned 
upon  him,  and  he  said : — "I  suppose  it's  to  ex- 
ercise all  their  muscles.  Y'know  a  canal  horse 
is  no  use  after  he  has  been  on  the  tow  path  for 
some  time.  He  can't  walk  anywhere  but  on 
the  flat  y'know,  and  I  suppose  it's  just  the 
same  with  bullocks."  The  spurs  of  the  Ara- 
valis,  under  which  the  train  was  running,  had 
evidently  suggested  this  brilliant  idea  which 
passed  uncontradicted,  for  the  Englishman 
was  looking  out  of  the  window. 

If  one  were  bold  enough  to  generalise  after 
the  manner  of  Globe-Trotters,  it  would  be  easy 
to  build  up  a  theory  on  the  well  incident  to 
account  for  the  apparent  insanity  of  some  of 
our  cold  weather  visitors.  Even  the  Young 
Man  from  Manchester  could  evolve  a  complete 
idea  for  the  training  of  well-bullocks  in  the 
East  at  thirty-seconds'  notice.  How  much  the 
more  could  a  cultivated  observer  from,  let  us 
say,  an  English  constituency  blunder  and  per- 
vert and  mangle !  We  in  this  country  have  no 
time  to  work  out  the  notion,  which  is  worthy 
of  the  consideration  of  some  leisurely  Teuton 
intellect. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  9 

Envy  may  have  prompted  a  too  bitter  judg- 
ment of  the  Young  Man  from  Manchester; 
for,  as  the  train  bore  him  from  Jeypore  to 
Ahmedabad,  happy  in  "his  getting  home  by 
Christmas,"  pleased  as  a  child  with  his  Delhi 
atrocities,  pink-cheeked,  whiskered  and  su- 
perbly self-confident,  the  Englishman,  whose 
home  for  the  time  was  a  dak-bungaloathsome 
hotel,  watched  his  departure  regretfully;  for 
he  knew  exactly  to  what  sort  of  genial,  cheery 
British  household,  rich  in  untravelled  kin,  that 
Young  Man  was  speeding.  It  is  pleasant  to 
play  at  globe-trotting;  but  to  enter  fully  into 
the  spirit  of  the  piece,  one  must  also  be  going 
home  for  Christmas. 


II. 


Shows  the  Charm  of  Rajputana  and  of  Jey- 
pore,  the  City  of  the  Globe-Trotter — Of  its 
Founder  and  its  Embellishment — Explains 
the  use  and  destiny  of  the  Stud-Bred,  and 
fails  to  explain  many  more  important 
matters. 

IF  any  part  of  a  land  strewn  with  dead  men's 
bones  have  a  special  claim  to  distinction, 
Rajputana,  as  the  cockpit  of  India,  stands  first. 
East  of  Suez  men  do  not  build  towers  on  the 
tops  of  hills  for  the  sake  of  the  view,  nor  do 
they  stripe  the  mountain  sides  with  bastioned 
stone  walls  to  keep  in  cattle.  Since  the  begin- 
ning of  time,  if  we  are  to  credit  the  legends, 
there  was  fighting — heroic  fighting — at  the 
foot  of  the  Aravalis,  and  beyond  in  the  great 
deserts  of  sand  penned  by  those  kindly  moun- 
tains from  spreading  over  the  heart  of  India. 
The  "Thirty-six  Royal  Races"  fought  as  royal 
races  know  how  to  do,  Chohan  with  Rahtor, 
brother  against  brother,  son  against  father. 
Later — but  excerpts  from  the  tangled  tale  of 
force,  fraud,  cunning,  desperate  love  and  more 
desperate  revenge,  crime  worthy  of  demons 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  II 

and  virtues  fit  for  gods,  may  be  found,  by  all 
who  care  to  look,  in  the  book  of  the  man  who 
loved  the  Rajputs  and  gave  a  life's  labours  in 
their  behalf.  From  Delhi  to  Abu,  and  from 
the  Indus  to  the  Chambul,  each  yard  of  ground 
has  witnessed  slaughter,  pillage  and  rapine. 
But,  to-day,  the  capital  of  the  State,  that 
Dhola  Rae,  son  of  Soora  Singh,  hacked  out 
more  than  nine  hundred  years  ago  with  the 
sword  from  some  weaker  ruler's  realm,  is 
lighted  with  gas,  and  possesses  many  striking 
and  English  peculiarities  which  will  be  shown 
in  their  proper  place. 

Dhola  Rae  was  killed  in  due  time,  and  for 
nine  hundred  years  Jeypore,  torn  by  the  in- 
trigues of  unruly  princes  and  princelings, 
fought  Asiatically. 

When  and  how  Jeypore  became  a  feudatory 
of  British  power,  and  in  what  manner  we  put 
a  slur  upon  Rajput  honour — punctilious  as  the 
honour  of  the  Pathan — are  matters  of  which 
the  Globe-Trotter  knows  more  than  we  do.  He 
"reads  up" — to  quote  his  own  words — a  city 
before  he  comes  to  us,  and,  straightway  going 
to  another  city,  forgets,  or,  worse  still,  mixes 
what  he  has  learnt — so  that  in  the  end  he 
writes  down  the  Rajput  a  Mahratta,  says  that 
Lahore  is  in  the  North-West  Provinces  and 


12  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

was  once  the  capital  of  Sivaji,  and  piteously 
demands  a  "guide-book  on  all  India,  a  thing 
that  you  can  carry  in  your  trunk  y'know — that 
gives  you  plain  descriptions  of  things  without 
mixing  you  up."  Here  is  a  chance  for  a 
writer  of  discrimination  and  void  of  con- 
science ! 

But  to  return  to  Jeypore — a  pink  city  set  on 
the  border  of  a  blue  lake,  and  surrounded  by 
the  low  red  spurs  of  the  Aravalis — a  city  to  see 
and  to  puzzle  over.  There  was  once  a  ruler  of 
the  State,  called  Jey  Singh,  who  lived  in  the 
days  of  Aurungzeb,  and  did  him  service  with 
foot  and  horse.  He  must  have  been  the  Solo- 
mon of  Rajputana,  for  through  the  forty-four 
years  of  his  reign  his  "wisdom  remained  with 
him."  He  led  armies,  and  when  fighting  was 
over,  turned  to  literature;  he  intrigued  des- 
perately and  successfully,  but  found  time  to 
gain  a  deep  insight  into  astronomy,  and,  by 
what  remains  above  ground  now,  wre  can  tell 
that  "whatsoever  his  eyes  desired,  he  kept  not 
from  him."  Knowing  his  own  worth,  he  de- 
serted the  city  of  Amber  founded  by  Dhola 
Rae  among  the  hills,  and,  six  miles  further,  in 
the  open  plain,  bade  one  Vedyadhar,  his  archi- 
tect, build  a  new  city,  as  seldom  Indian  city 
was  built  before — with  huge  streets  straight  as 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  13 

an  arrow,  sixty  yards  broad,  and  cross-streets 
broad  and  straight.  Many  years  afterwards 
the  good  people  of  America  builded  their 
towns  after  this  pattern,  but  knowing  nothing 
of  Jey  Singh,  they  took  all  the  credit  to  them- 
selves. 

He  built  himself  everything  that  pleased 
him,  palaces  and  gardens  and  temples,  and 
then  died,  and  was  buried  under  a  white 
marble  tomb  on  a  hill  overlooking  the  city. 
He  was  a  traitor,  if  history  speaks  truth,  to 
his  own  kin,  and  he  was  an  accomplished  mur- 
derer, but  he  did  his  best  to  check  infanticide ; 
he  reformed  the  Mahomedan  calendar;  he 
piled  up  a  superb  library  and  he  made  Jeypore 
a  marvel. 

Later  on  came  a  successor,  educated  and  en- 
lightened by  all  the  lamps  of  British  Progress, 
and  converted  the  city  of  Jey  Singh  into  a  sur- 
prise— a  big,  bewildering,  practical  joke.  He 
laid  down  sumptuous  trottoirs  of  hewn  stone, 
and  central  carriage  drives,  also  of  hewn  stone, 
in  the  main  street;  he,  that  is  to  say,  Colonel 
Jacob,  the  Superintending  Engineer  of  the 
State,  devised  a  water-supply  for  the  city  and 
studded  the  ways  with  stand-pipes.  He  built 
gas-works,  set  a-foot  a  School  of  Art,  a 
Museum,  all  the  things  in  fact  which  are  neces- 


14 

sary  to  Western  municipal  welfare  and  com- 
fort, and  saw  that  they  were  the  best  of  their 
kind.  How  much  Colonel  Jacob  has  done,  not 
only  for  the  good  of  Jeypore  city  but  for  the 
good  of  the  State  at  large,  will  never  be 
known,  because  the  officer  in  question  is  one 
of  the  not  small  class  who  resolutely  refuse  to 
talk  about  their  own  work.  The  result  of  the 
good  work  is  that  the  old  and  the  new,  the 
rampantly  raw  and  the  sullenly  old,  stand 
cheek-by-jowl  in  startling  contrast.  Thus,  the 
branded  bull  trips  over  the  rails  of  a  steel 
tramway  which  brings  out  the  city  rubbish; 
the  lacquered  and  painted  ruth  behind  the  two 
little  stag-like  trotting  bullocks,  catches  its 
primitive  wheels  in  the  cast-iron  gas-lamp  post 
with  the  brass  nozzle  a-top  and  all  Rajputana, 
gaily-clad,  small-turbaned,  swaggering  Raj- 
putana, circulates  along  the  magnificent  pave- 
ments. 

The  fortress-crowned  hills  look  down  upon 
the  strange  medley.  One  of  them  bears  on 
its  flank  in  huge  white  letters  the  cheery  in- 
script  "Welcome!"  This  was  made  when  the 
Prince  of  Wales  visited  Jeypore  to  shoot  his 
first  tiger;  but  the  average  traveller  of  to-day 
may  appropriate  the  message  to  himself,  for 
Jeypore  takes  great  care  of  strangers  and 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  15 

shows  them  all  courtesy.  This,  by  the  way,  de- 
moralises the  Globe-Trotter,  whose  first  cry 
is: — "Where  can  we  get  horses?  Where  can 
we  get  elephants?  Who  is  the  man  to  write 
to  for  all  these  things  ?" 

Thanks  to  the  courtesy  of  the  Maharaja,  it 
is  possible  to  see  everything,  but  for  the  in- 
curious who  object  to  being  driven  through 
their  sights,  a  journey  down  any  one  of  the 
great  main  streets  is  a  day's  delightful  occu- 
pation. The  view  is  as  unobstructed  as  that  of 
the  Champs  Elysees ;  but  in  place  of  the  white- 
stone  fronts  of  Paris,  rises  a  long  line  of  open- 
work screen-wall,  the  prevailing  tone  of  which 
is  pink — caramel  pink,  but  house-owners  have 
unlimited  license  to  decorate  their  tenements 
as  they  please.  Jeypore,  broadly  considered,  is 
Hindu,  and  her  architecture  of  the  riotous 
many-arched  type  which  even  the  Globe- 
Trotter  after  a  short  time  learns  to  call  Hindu. 
It  is  neither  temperate  nor  noble,  but  it  satis- 
fies the  general  desire  for  something  that 
"really  looks  Indian."  A  perverse  taste  for 
low  company  drew  the  Englishman  from  the 
pavement — to  walk  upon  a  real  stone  pave- 
ment is  in  itself  a  privilege — up  a  side-street 
where  he  assisted  at  a  quail  fight  and  found 
the  low  caste  Rajput  a  cheery  and  affable  soul 


1 6  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

The  owner  of  the  losing  quail  was  a  sowar  in 
the  Maharaja's  army.  He  explained  that  his 
pay  was  six  rupees  a  month  paid  bi-monthly. 
He  was  cut  the  cost  of  his  khaki  blouse, 
brown-leather  accoutrements  and  jack-boots; 
lance,  saddle,  sword,  and  horse  were  given 
free.  He  refused  to  say  for  how  many  months 
in  the  year  he  was  drilled,  and  said  vaguely 
that  his  duties  were  mainly  escort  ones,  and  he 
had  no  fault  to  find  with  them.  The  defeat  of 
his  quail  had  vexed  him,  and  he  desired  the 
Sahib  to  understand  that  the  sowars  of  His 
Highness's  army  could  ride.  A  clumsy  at- 
tempt at  a  compliment  so  fired  his  martial 
blood  that  he  climbed  into  his  saddle,  and  then 
and  there  insisted  on  showing  off  his  horse- 
manship. The  road  was  narrow,  the  lance 
was  long,  and  the  horse  was  a  big  one,  but  no 
one  objected,  and  the  Englishman  sat  him 
down  on  a  doorstep  and  watched  the  fun.  The 
horse  seemed  in  some  shadowy  way  familiar. 
His  head  was  not  the  lean  head  of  the  Kathi- 
awar,  nor  his  crest  the  crest  of  the  Marwarri, 
and  his  forelegs  did  not  seem  to  belong  to  the 
stony  district.  "Where  did  he  come  from?" 
The  sowar  pointed  northward  and  said  "from 
Amritsar,"  but  he  pronounced  it  "Armtzar." 
Many  horses  had  been  bought  at  the  spring 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  17 

fairs  in  the  Punjab:  they  cost  about  Rs.  200 
each,  perhaps  more,  the  sowar  could  not  say. 
Some  came  from  Hissar  and  some  from  other 
places  beyond  Delhi.  They  were  very  good 
horses.  "That  horse  there,"  he  pointed  to  one 
a  little  distance  down  the  street,  "is  the  son  of 
a  big  Sirkar  horse — the  kind  that  the  Sirkar 
make  for  breeding  horses — so  high!"  The 
owner  of  "that  horse"  swaggered  up  jaw- 
bandaged  and  cat-moustached  and  bade  the 
Englishman  look  at  his  mouth;  bought  of 
course,  when  a  butcha.  Both  men  together 
said  that  the  Sahib  had  better  examine  the 
Maharaja  Sahib's  stable  where  there  were 
hundreds  of  horses — huge  as  elephants  or  tiny 
as  sheep. 

To  the  stables  the  Englishman  accordingly 
went,  knowing  beforehand  what  he  would  find, 
and  wondering  whether  the  Sirkar's  "big 
horses"  were  meant  to  get  mounts  for  Rajput 
sowars.  The  Maharaja's  stables  are  royal  in 
size  and  appointments.  The  enclosure  round 
which  they  stand  must  be  about  half  a  mile 
long — it  allows  ample  space  for  exercising  be- 
sides paddocks  for  the  colts.  The  horses, 
about  two  hundred  and  fifty,  are  bedded  in 
pure  white  sand — bad  for  the  coat  if  they  roll, 
but  good  for  the  feet — the  pickets  are  of  white 


r8  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

marble,  the  heel-ropes  in  every  case  of  good 
sound  rope,  and  in  every  case  the  stables  are 
exquisitely  clean.  Each  stall  contains  above 
the  manger,  a  curious  little  bunk  for  the  syce, 
who,  if  he  uses  the  accommodation,  must  as- 
suredly die  once  each  hot  weather. 

A  journey  round  the  stables  is  saddening, 
for  the  attendants  are  very  anxious  to  strip 
their  charges,  and  the  stripping  shows  so 
much.  A  few  men  in  India  are  credited  with 
the  faculty  of  never  forgetting1  a  horse  they 
have  once  seen,  and  of  knowing  the  produce  of 
every  stallion  they  have  met.  The  English- 
man would  have  given  something  for  their 
company  at  that  hour.  His  knowledge  of 
horseflesh  was  very  limited ;  but  he  felt  certain 
that  more  than  one  or  two  of  the  sleek,  per- 
fectly groomed  country-breds  should  have 
been  justifying  their  existence  in  the  ranks  of 
the  British  cavalry  instead  of  eating  their 
heads  off  on  six  seers  of  gram  and  one  of  go  or 
per  diem.  But  they  had  all  been  honestly 
bought  and  honestly  paid  for;  and  there  was 
nothing  in  the  wide  world  to  prevent  His 
Highness,  if  he  wished  to  do  so,  from  sweep- 
ing up  the  pick  and  pride  of  all  the  horses  in 
the  Punjab.  The  attendants  appeared  to  take 
a  wicked  delight  in  saying  "eshtud-bred"  very 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  19 

loudly  and  with  unnecessary  emphasis  as  they 
threw  back  the  loin-cloth.  Sometimes  they 
were  wrong,  but  in  too  many  cases  they  were 
right. 

The  Englishman  left  the  stables  and  the 
great  central  maidan  where  a  nervous  Biluchi 
was  being  taught,  by  a  perfect  network  of 
ropes,  to  "monkey  jump,"  and  went  out  into 
the  streets  reflecting  on  the  working  of  horse- 
breeding  operations  under  the  Government  of 
India,  and  the  advantages  of  having  unlimited 
money  wherewith  to  profit  by  other  people's 
mistakes. 

Then,  as  happened  to  the  great  Tartarin  of 
Tarescon  in  Milianah,  wild  beasts  began  to 
roar,  and  a  crowd  of  little  boys  laughed.  The 
lions  of  Jeypore  are  tigers,  caged  in  a  public 
place  for  the  sport  of  the  people,  who  hiss  at 
them  and  disturb  their  royal  feelings.  Two  or 
three  of  the  six  great  brutes  are  magnificent. 
All  of  them  are  short-tempered,  and  the  bars 
of  their  captivity  not  too  strong.  A  pariah- 
dog  was  furtively  trying  to  scratch  out  a  frag- 
ment of  meat  from  between  the  bars  of  one  of 
the  cages,  and  the  occupant  tolerated  him. 
Growing  bolder — the  starveling  growled;  the 
tiger  struck  at  him  with  his  paw  and  the  dog 
fled  howling  with  fear.  When  he  returned,  he 


20  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

brought  two  friends  with  him,  and  the  trio 
mocked  the  captive  from  a  distance. 

It  was  not  a  pleasant  sight  and  suggested 
Globe-Trotters — gentlemen  who  imagine  that 
"more  curricles"  should  come  at  their  bidding, 
and  on  being  undeceived  become  abusive. 


III. 


Does  not  in  any  sort  describe  the  Dead  City  of 
Amber,  but  gives  detailed  information  of  a 
Cotton  Press. 

AND  what  shall  be  said  of  Amber,  Queen  of 
the  Pass — the  city  that  Jey  Singh  bade 
his  people  slough  as  snakes  cast  their  skins? 
The  Globe-Trotter  will  assure  you  that  it 
must  be  "done"  before  anything  else,  and  the 
Globe-Trotter  is,  for  once,  perfectly  correct. 
Amber  lies  between  six  and  seven  miles  from 
Jeypore  among  the  "tumbled  fragments  of  the 
hills,"  and  is  reachable  by  so  prosaic  a  con- 
veyance as  a  ticca-ghari,  and  so  comfortable 
a  one  as  an  elephant.  He  is  provided  by  the 
Maharaja,  and  the  people  who  make  India 
their  prey  are  apt  to  accept  his  services  as  a 
matter  of  course. 

Rise  very  early  in  the  morning,  before  the 
stars  have  gone  out,  and  drive  through  the 
sleeping  city  till  the  pavement  gives  place  to 
cactus  and  sand,  and  educational  and  enlight- 
ened institutions  to  mile  upon  mile  of  semi- 
decayed  Hindu  temples — brown  and  weather- 


22  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

beaten — running  down  to  the  shores  of  the 
great  Man  Sagar  Lake,  wherein  are  more 
ruined  temples,  palaces  and  fragments  of 
causeways.  The  water-birds  have  their  home 
in  the  half-submerged  arcades  and  the  mugger 
nuzzles  the  shafts  of  the  pillars.  It  is  a  fitting 
prelude  to  the  desolation  of  Amber.  Beyond 
the  Man  Sagar  the  road  of  to-day  climbs  up- 
hill and  by  its  side  runs  the  huge  stone-cause- 
way of  yesterday — blocks  sunk  in  concrete. 
Down  this  path  the  swords  of  Amber  went  out 
to  kill.  A  triple  wall  rings  the  city,  and,  at 
the  third  gate,  the  road  drops  into  the  valley 
of  Amber.  In  the  half  light  of  dawn,  a  great 
city  sunk  between  hills  and  built  round  three 
sides  of  a  lake  is  dimly  visible,  and  one  waits 
to  catch  the  hum  that  should  rise  from  it  as  the 
day  breaks.  The  air  in  the  valley  is  bitterly 
chill.  With  the  growing  light,  Amber  stands 
revealed,  and  the  traveller  sees  that  it  is  a  city 
that  will  never  wake.  A  few  meenas  live  in 
huts  at  the  end  of  the  valley,  but  the  temples, 
the  shrines,  the  palaces,  and  the  tiers-on-tiers 
of  houses  are  desolate.  Trees  grow  in  and 
split  open  the  walls,  the  windows  are  filled 
with  brushwood,  and  the  cactus  chokes  the 
street.  The  Englishman  made  his  way  up  the 
side  of  the  hill  to  the  great  palace  that  over- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  23 

looks  everything  except  the  red  fort  of  Jeig- 
hur,  guardian  of  Amber.  As  the  elephant 
swung  up  the  steep  roads  paved  with  stone  and 
built  out  on  the  sides  of  the  hill,  the  English- 
man looked  into  empty  houses  where  the  little 
grey  squirrel  sat  and  scratched  its  ears.  The 
peacock  walked  upon  the  house-tops  and  the 
blue  pigeon  roosted  within.  He  passed  under 
iron-studded  gates  whereof  the  hinges  were 
eaten  out  with  rust,  and  by  walls  plumed  and 
crowned  with  grass,  and  under  more  gateways, 
till,  at  last,  he  reached  the  palace  and  came  sud- 
denly into  a  great  quadrangle  where  two 
blinded,  arrogant  stallions,  covered  with  red 
and  gold  trappings,  screamed  and  neighed  at 
each  other  from  opposite  ends  of  the  vast  space. 
For  a  little  time  these  were  the  only  visible 
living  beings,  and  they  were  in  perfect  accord 
with  the  spirit  of  the  spot.  Afterwards  certain 
workmen  appeared,  for  it  seems  that  the  Maha- 
raja keeps  the  old  palace  of  his  forefathers  in 
good  repair,  but  they  were  modern  and  mer- 
cenary, and  with  great  difficulty  were  detached 
from  the  skirts  of  the  traveller.  A  somewhat 
extensive  experience  of  palace-seeing  had 
taught  him  that  it  is  best  to  see  palaces  alone, 
for  the  Oriental  as  a  guide  is  undiscriminating 
and  sets  too  great  a  store  on  corrugated  iron 
roofs  and  glazed  drain-pipes. 


24  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

So  the  Englishman  went  into  this  palace 
built  of  stone,  bedded  on  stone,  springing  out 
of  scarped  rock,  and  reached  by  stone  ways — 
nothing  but  stone.  Presently,  he  stumbled 
across  a  little  temple  of  Kali,  a  gem  of  marble 
tracery  and  inlay,  very  dark  and,  at  that  hour 
of  the  morning,  very  cold. 

If,  as  Violet-le-Duc  tells  us  to  believe,  a 
building  reflects  the  character  of  its  inhabi- 
tants, it  must  be  impossible  for  one  reared  in 
an  Eastern  palace  to  think  straightly  or  speak 
freely  or — but  here  the  annals  of  Rajputana 
contradict  the  theory — to  act  openly.  The 
crampt  and  darkened  rooms,  the  narrow 
smooth-walled  passages  with  recesses  where  a 
man  might  wait  for  his  enemy  unseen,  the  maze 
of  ascending  and  descending  stairs  leading  no- 
whither,  the  ever  present  screens  of  marble 
tracery  that  may  hide  or  reveal  so  much, — all 
these  things  breathe  of  plot  and  counter-plot, 
league  and  intrigue.  In  a  living  palace  where 
the  sightseer  knows  and  feels  that  there  are 
human  beings  everywhere,  and  that  he  is  fol- 
lowed by  scores  of  unseen  eyes,  the  impression 
is  almost  unendurable.  In  a  dead  palace — a 
cemetery  of  loves  and  hatreds  done  with  hun- 
dreds of  years  ago,  and  of  plottings  that  had 
for  their  end — though  the  grey  beards  who 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE         25 

plotted  knew  it  not — the  coming  of  the  British 
tourist  with  guide-book  and  sunhat — oppres- 
sion gives  place  to  simply  impertinent  curiosity. 
The  Englishman  wandered  into  all  parts  of  the 
palace,  for  there  was  no  one  to  stop  him — not 
even  the  ghosts  of  the  dead  Ranis — through 
ivory-studded  doors,  into  the  women's  quar- 
ters, where  a  stream  of  water  once  flowed  over 
a  chiselled  marble  channel.  A  creeper  had  set 
its  hands  upon  the  lattice  here,  and  there  was 
dust  of  old  nests  in  one  of  the  niches  in  the 
wall.  Did  the  lady  of  light  virtue  who  man- 
aged to  become  possessed  of  so  great  a  por- 
tion of  Jey  Singh's  library  ever  set  her  dainty 
feet  in  the  trim  garden  of  the  Hall  of  Pleasure 
beyond  the  screen-work?  Was  it  in  the  forty- 
pillared  Hall  of  Audience  that  the  order  went 
forth  that  the  Chief  of  Birjooghar  was  to  be 
slain,  and  from  what  wall  did  the  King  look 
out  when  the  horsemen  clattered  up  the  steep 
stone  path  to  the  palace,  bearing  on  their  sad- 
dle-bows the  heads  of  the  bravest  of  Rajore? 
There  were  questions  innumerable  to  be  asked 
in  each  court  and  keep  and  cell;  aye,  but  the 
only  answer  was  the  cooing  of  the  pigeons  on 
the  walls. 

If  a  man  desired  beauty,  there  was  enough 
and  to  spare  in  the  palace;  and  of  strength 
more  than  enough.  By  inlay  and  carved 


26  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

marble,  by  glass  and  colour,  the  Kings  who 
took  their  pleasure  in  that  now  desolate  pile, 
made  all  that  their  eyes  rested  upon  royal  and 
superb.  But  any  description  of  the  artistic  side 
of  the  palace,  if  it  were  not  impossible,  would 
be  wearisome.  The  wise  man  will  visit  it  when 
time  and  occasion  serve,  and  will  then,  in  some 
small  measure,  understand  what  must  have 
been  the  riotous,  sumptuous,  murderous  life  to 
which  our  Governors  and  Lieutenant-Govern- 
ors,  Commissioners  and  Deputy  Commission- 
ers, Colonels  and  Captains  and  the  Subalterns 
after  their  kind,  have  put  an  end. 

From  the  top  of  the  palace  you  may  read  if 
you  please  the  Book  of  Ezekiel  written  in  stone 
upon  the  hillside.  Coming  up,  the  Englishman 
had  seen  the  city  from  below  or  on  a  level.  He 
now  looked  into  its  very  heart — the  heart  that 
had  ceased  to  beat.  There  was  no  sound  of 
men  or  cattle,  or  grind-stones  in  those  pitiful 
streets — nothing  but  the  cooing  of  the  pigeons. 
At  first  it  seemed  that  the  palace  was  not  ruined 
at  all — that  presently  the  women  would  come 
up  on  the  house-tops  and  the  bells  would  ring 
in  the  temples.  But  as  he  attempted  to  follow 
with  his  eye  the  turns  of  the  streets,  the  Eng- 
lishman saw  that  they  died  out  in  wood  tangle 
and  blocks  of  fallen  stone,  and  that  some  of  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  27 

houses  were  rent  with  great  cracks,  and  pierced 
from  roof  to  road  with  holes  that  let  in  the 
morning  sun.  The  drip-stones  of  the  eaves 
were  gap-toothed,  and  the  tracery  of  the 
screens  had  fallen  out  so  that  zenana-rooms  lay 
shamelessly  open  to  the  day.  On  the  outskirts 
of  the  city,  the  strong  walled  houses  dwindled 
and  sank  down  to  mere  stone-heaps  and  faint 
indications  of  plinth  and  wall,  hard  to  trace 
against  the  background  of  stony  soil.  The 
shadow  of  the  palace  lay  over  two-thirds  of  the 
city  and  the  trees  deepened  the  shadow.  "He 
who  has  bent  him  o'er  the  dead"  after  the  hour 
of  which  Byron  sings,  knows  that  the  features 
of  the  man  become  blunted  as  it  were — the  face 
begins  to  fade.  The  same  hideous  look  lies  on 
the  face  of  the  Queen  of  the  Pass,  and  when 
once  this  is  realised,  the  eye  wonders  that  it 
could  have  ever  believed  in  the  life  of  her.  She 
is  the  city  "whose  graves  are  set  in  the  sides  of 
the  pit,  and  her  company  is  round  about  her 
grave,"  sister  of  Pathros,  Zoan  and  No. 

Moved  by  a  thoroughly  insular  instinct,  the 
Englishman  took  up  a  piece  of  plaster  and 
heaved  it  from  the  palace  wall  into  the  dark 
streets  below.  It  bounded  from  a  house-top  to 
a  window-ledge,  and  thence  into  a  little  square, 
and  the  sound  of  its  fall  was  hollow  and  echo- 


28  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

ing,  as  the  sound  of  a  stone  in  a  well.  Then  the 
silence  closed  up  upon  the  sound,  till  in  the  far 
away  courtyard  below  the  roped  stallions  be- 
gan screaming  afresh.  There  may  be  desola- 
tion in  the  great  Indian  Desert  to  the  west- 
ward, and  there  is  desolation  upon  the  open 
seas ;  but  the  desolation  of  Amber  is  beyond  the 
loneliness  either  of  land  or  sea.  Men  by  the 
hundred  thousand  must  have  toiled  at  the  walls 
that  bound  it,  the  temples  and  bastions  that 
stud  the  walls,  the  fort  that  overlooks  all,  the 
canals  that  once  lifted  water  to  the  palace,  and 
the  garden  in  the  lake  of  the  valley.  Renan 
could  describe  it  as  it  stands  to-day,  and  Veres- 
chagin  could  paint  it. 

Arrived  at  this  satisfactory  conclusion,  the 
Englishman  went  down  through  the  palace  and 
the  scores  of  venomous  and  suggestive  little 
rooms  to  the  elephant  in  the  courtyard  and  was 
taken  back  in  due  time  to  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury in  the  shape  of  His  Highness  the  Maha- 
raja's Cotton  Press,  returning  a  profit  of  27 
per  cent.,  and  fitted  with  two  engines  of  fifty 
horse-power  each,  an  hydraulic  press  capable 
of  exerting  a  pressure  of  three  tons  per  square 
inch,  and  everything  else  to  correspond.  It 
stood  under  a  neat  corrugated  iron  roof  close 
to  the  Jeypore  Railway  Station,  and  was  in 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  29 

most  perfect  order,  but  somehow  it  did  not 
taste  well  after  Amber.  There  was  aggressive- 
ness about  the  engines  and  the  smell  of  the  raw 
cotton. 

The  modern  side  of  Jeypore  must  not  be 
mixed  with  the  ancient. 


IV. 


The  Temple  of  Mahadeo  and  the  Manners  of 
such  as  see  India — The  Man  by  the  Water- 
Troughs  and  his  Knowledge — The  Voice  of 
the  City  and  what  it  said — Personalities  and 
the  Hospital — The  House  Beautiful  of  Jey- 
pore  and  its  Builders. 

FROM  the  Cotton  Press  the  Englishman 
wandered  through  the  wide  streets  till  he 
came  into  a  Hindu  Temple — rich  in  marble, 
stone  and  inlay,  and  a  deep  and  tranquil  silence, 
close  to  the  Public  Library  of  the  State.  The 
brazen  bull  was  hung  with  flowers,  and  men 
were  burning  the  evening  incense  before  Maha- 
deo, while  those  who  had  prayed  their  prayer, 
beat  upon  the  bells  hanging  from  the  roofs  and 
passed  out,  secure  in  the  knowledge  that  the 
god  had  heard  them.  If  there  be  much  re- 
ligion, there  is  little  reverence,  as  Westerns 
understand  the  term,  in  the  services  of  the  gods 
of  the  East.  A  tiny  little  maiden,  child  of  a 
monstrously  ugly  priest  with  one  chalk-white 
eye,  staggered  across  the  marble  pavement  to 
the  shrine  and  threw,  with  a  gust  of  childish 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  31 

laughter,  the  blossoms  she  was  carrying  into 
the  lap  of  the  great  Mahadeo  himself.  Then 
she  made  as  though  she  would  leap  up  to  the 
bells  and  ran  away,  still  laughing,  into  the 
shadow  of  the  cells  behind  the  shrine,  while 
her  father  explained  that  she  was  but  a  baby 
and  that  Mahadeo  would  take  no  notice.  The 
temple,  he  said,  was  specially  favored  by  the 
Maharaja,  and  drew  from  lands  an  income  of 
twenty  thousand  rupees  a  year.  Thakoors  and 
great  men  also  gave  gifts  out  of  their  benevo- 
lence ;  and  there  was  nothing  in  the  wide  world 
to  prevent  an  Englishman  from  following  their 
example. 

By  this  time,  for  Amber  and  the  Cotton 
Press  had  filled  the  hours,  night  was  falling, 
and  the  priests  unhooked  the  swinging  jets 
and  began  to  light  up  the  impassive  face  of 
Mahadeo  with  gas !  They  used  Tsendstikker 
matches. 

Full  night  brought  the  hotel  and  its  curi- 
ously-composed human  menagerie. 

There  is,  if  a  work-a-day  world  will  give 
credit,  a  society  entirely  outside,  and  uncon- 
nected with,  that  of  the  Station — a  planet 
within  a  planet,  where  nobody  knows  anything 
about  the  Collector's  wife,  the  Colonel's  dinner- 
party, or  what  was  really  the  matter  with  the 


32  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

Engineer.  It  is  a  curious,  an  insatiably  curi- 
ous, thing,  and  its  literature  is  Newman's 
Bradshaw.  Wandering  "old  arms-sellers"  and 
others  live  upon  it,  and  so  do  the  garnetmen 
and  the  makers  of  ancient  Rajput  shields.  The 
world  of  the  innocents  abroad  is  a  touching 
and  unsophisticated  place,  and  its  very  atmos- 
phere urges  the  Anglo-Indian  unconsciously  to 
extravagant  mendacity.  Can  you  wonder, 
then,  that  a  guide  of  long-standing  should  in 
time  grow  to  be  an  accomplished  liar? 

Into  this  world  sometimes  breaks  the  Anglo- 
Indian  returned  from  leave,  or  a  fugitive  to  the 
sea,  and  his  presence  is  like  that  of  a  well- 
known  landmark  in  the  desert.  The  old  arms- 
seller  knows  and  avoids  him,  and  he  is  de- 
tested by  the  jobber  of  gharis  who  calls  every- 
one "my  lord"  in  English,  and  panders  to  the 
"glaring  race  anomaly"  by  saying  that  every 
carriage  not  under  his  control  is  "rotten,  my 
lord,  having  been  used  by  natives."  One  of 
the  privileges  of  playing  at  tourist  is  the  brevet- 
rank  of  "Lord."  Hazur  is  not  to  be  compared 
with  it. 

There  are  many,  and  some  very  curious, 
methods  of  seeing  India.  One  of  these  is  buy- 
ing English  translations  of  the  more  Zolaistic 
of  Zola's  novels  and  reading  them  from  break- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  33- 

fast  to  dinner-time  in  the  verandah.  Yet  an- 
other, even  simpler,  is  American  in  its  concep- 
tion. Take  a  Newman's  Bradshaw  and  a  blue 
pencil,  and  race  up  and  down  the  length  of  the 
Empire,  ticking  off  the  names  of  the  stations 
"done."  To  do  this  thoroughly,  keep  strictly 
to  the  railway  buildings  and  form  your  con- 
clusions through  the  carriage-windows.  These 
eyes  have  seen  both  ways  of  working  in  full 
blast  and,  on  the  whole,  the  first  is  the  most 
commendable. 

Let  us  consider  now  with  due  reverence  the 
modern  side  of  Jeypore.  It  is  difficult  to  write 
of  a  nickel-plated  civilisation  set  down  under 
the  immemorial  Aravalis  in  the  first  state  of 
Rajputana.  The  red-grey  hills  seem  to  laugh 
at  it,  and  the  ever-shifting  sand-dunes  under 
the  hills  take  no  account  of  it,  for  they  advance 
upon  the  bases  of  the  monogrammed,  coronet- 
crowned  lamp-posts,  and  fill  up  the  points  of 
the  natty  tramways  near  the  Water-works, 
which  are  the  outposts  of  the  civilisation  of 
Jeypore. 

Escape  from  the  city  by  the  Railway  Station 
till  you  meet  the  cactus  and  the  mud-bank  and 
the  Maharaja's  Cotton  Press.  Pass  between  a 
tramway  and  a  trough  for  wayfaring  camels 
till  your  foot  sinks  ankle-deep  in  soft  sand,  and 


34  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

you  come  upon  what  seems  to  be  the  fringe  of 
illimitable  desert — mound  upon  mound  of  tus- 
socks overgrown  with  plumed  grass  where  the 
parrots  sit  and  swing.  Here,  if  you  have  kept 
to  the  road,  you  shall  find  a  bund  faced  with 
stone,  a  great  tank,  and  pumping  machinery 
fine  as  the  heart  of  a  municipal  engineer  can 
desire — pure  water,  sound  pipes  and  well-kept 
engines.  If  you  belong  to  what  is  sarcastically 
styled  an  "able  and  intelligent  municipality" 
under  the  British  Raj,  go  down  to  the  level  of 
the  tank,  scoop  up  the  water  in  your  hands  and 
drink,  thinking  meanwhile  of  the  defects  of 
the  town  whence  you  came.  The  experience 
will  be  a  profitable  one.  There  are  statistics  in 
connection  with  the  Water-works,  figures  re- 
lating to  "three-throw-plungers,"  delivery  and 
supply,  which  should  be  known  to  the  profes- 
sional reader.  They  would  not  interest  the  un- 
professional who  would  learn  his  lesson  among 
the  thronged  stand-pipes  of  the  city. 

While  the  Englishman  was  preparing  in  his 
mind  a  scathing  rebuke  for  an  erring  munici- 
pality that  he  knew  of,  a  camel  swung  across 
the  sands,  its  driver's  jaw  and  brow  bound 
mummy  fashion  to  guard  against  the  dust. 
The  man  was  evidently  a  stranger  to  the  place, 
for  he  pulled  up  and  asked  the  Englishman 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  35 

where  the  drinking  troughs  were.  He  was  a 
gentleman  and  bore  very  patiently  with  the 
Englishman's  absurd  ignorance  of  his  Dialect 
He  had  come  from  some  village,  with  an  un- 
pronounceable name,  thirty  kos  away,  to  see 
his  brother's  son  who  was  sick  in  the  big  Hos- 
pital. While  the  camel  was  drinking,  the  man 
talked,  lying  back  on  his  mount.  He  knew 
nothing  of  Jeypore,  except  the  names  of  cer- 
tain Englishmen  in  it,  the  men  who,  he  said, 
had  made  the  Water-works  and  built  the  Hos- 
pital for  his  brother's  son's  comfort. 

And  this  is  the  curious  feature  of  Jeypore; 
though  happily  the  city  is  not  unique  in  its 
peculiarity.  When  the  late  Maharaja  ascended 
the  throne,  more  than  fifty  years  ago,  it  was  his 
royal  will  and  pleasure  that  Jeypore  should  ad- 
vance. Whether  he  was  prompted  by  love  for 
his  subjects,  desire  for  praise,  or  the  magnifi- 
cent vanity  with  which  Jey  Singh  must  have 
been  so  largely  dowered,  are  questions  that  con- 
cern nobody.  In  the  latter  years  of  his  reign, 
he  was  supplied  with  Englishmen  who  made 
the  State  their  father-land,  and  identified  them- 
selves with  its  progress  as  only  Englishmen 
can.  Behind  them  stood  the  Maharaja  ready 
to  spend  money  with  a  lavishness  that  no  Su- 
preme Government  would  dream  of;  and  it 


36 

would  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  two 
made  the  State  what  it  is.  When  Ram  Singh 
died,  Madho  Singh,  his  successor,  a  conserva- 
tive Hindu,  forbore  to  interfere  in  any  way 
with  the  work  that  was  going  forward.  It  is 
said  in  the  city  that  he  does  not  overburden 
himself  with  the  cares  of  State,  the  driving 
power  being  mainly  in  the  hands  of  a  Bengali, 
who  has  everything  but  the  name  of  Minister. 
Nor  do  the  Englishmen,  it  is  said  in  the  city, 
mix  themselves  with  the  business  of  Govern- 
ment ;  their  business  being  wholly  executive. 

They  can,  according  to  the  voice  of  the  city, 
do  what  they  please,  and  the  voice  of  the  city — 
not  in  the  main  roads  but  in  the  little  side-alleys 
where  the  stall-less  bull  blocks  the  path — at- 
tests how  well  their  pleasure  has  suited  the 
pleasure  of  the  people.  In  truth,  to  men  of 
action  few  things  could  be  more  delightful  than 
having  a  State  of  fifteen  thousand  square  miles 
placed  at  their  disposal,  as  it  were,  to  leave 
their  mark  on.  Unfortunately  for  the  vagrant 
traveller,  those  who  work  hard  for  practical 
ends  prefer  not  to  talk  about  their  doings,  and 
he  must,  therefore,  pick  up  what  information 
he  can  at  second-hand  or  in  the  city.  The  men 
at  the  stand-pipes  explain  that  the  Maharaja 
Sahib's  father  gave  the  order  for  the  Water- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  37 

works  and  that  Yakub  Sahib  made  them — not 
only  in  the  city  but  out  away  in  the  district. 
"Did  people  grow  more  crops  thereby?"  "Of 
course  they  did;  were  canals  made  to  wash  in 
only?"  "How  much  more  crops?"  "Who 
knows.  The  Sahib  had  better  go  and  ask  some 
official."  Increased  irrigation  means  increase 
of  revenue  for  the  State  somewhere,  but  the 
man  who  brought  about  the  increase  does  not 
say  so. 

After  a  few  days  of  amateur  globe-trotting, 
a  shamelessness  great  as  that  of  the  other 
loafer — the  red-nosed  man  who  hangs  about 
.ompounds  and  is  always  on  the  eve  of  start- 
ing for  Calcutta — possesses  the  masquerader; 
so  that  he  feels  equal  to  asking  a  Resident  for 
a  parcel-gilt  howdah,  or  dropping  in  to  dinner 
with  a  Lieutenant-Governor.  No  man  has  a 
right  to  keep  anything  back  from  a  Globe- 
Trotter,  who  is  a  mild,  temperate,  gentlemanly 
and  unobtrusive  seeker  after  truth.  Therefore 
he  who,  without  a  word  of  enlightenment, 
sends  the  visitor  into  a  city  which  he  himself 
has  beautified  and  adorned  and  made  clean  and 
wholesome,  deserves  unsparing  exposure.  And 
the  city  may  be  trusted  to  betray  him.  The 
malli  in  the  Ram  Newa's  Gardens,  gardens — 
here  the  Englishman  can  speak  from  a  fairly 


38  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

extensive  experience — finer  than  any  in  India 
and  fit  to  rank  with  the  best  in  Paris — says  that 
the  Maharaja  gave  the  order  and  Yakub  Sahib 
made  the  Gardens.  He  also  says  that  the  Hos- 
pital just  outside  the  Gardens  was  built  by 
Yakub  Sahib,  and  if  the  Sahib  will  go  to  the 
centre  of  the  Gardens,  he  will  find  another  big 
building,  a  Museum  by  the  same  hand. 

But  the  Englishman  went  first  to  the  Hos- 
pital, and  found  the  out-patients  beginning  to 
arrive.  A  hospital  cannot  tell  lies  about  its 
own  progress  as  a  municipality  can.  Sick  folk 
either  come  or  lie  in  their  own  villages.  In  the 
case  of  the  Mayo  Hospital  they  came,  and  the 
operation-book  showed  that  they  had  been  in 
the  habit  of  coming.  Doctors  at  issue  with 
provincial  and  local  administrations,  Civil  Sur- 
geons who  cannot  get  their  indents  complied 
with,  ground-down  and  mutinous  practitioners 
all  India  over,  would  do  well  to  visit  the  Mayo 
Hospital,  Jeypore.  They  might,  in  the  exceed- 
ing bitterness  of  their  envy,  be  able  to  point 
out  some  defects  in  its  supplies,  or  its  beds,  or 
its  splints,  or  in  the  absolute  isolation  of  the 
women's  quarters  from  the  men's. 

Envy  is  a  low  and  degrading  passion,  and 
should  be  striven  against.  From  the  Hospital 
the  Englishman  went  to  the  Museum  in  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  39 

centre  of  the  Gardens,  and  was  eaten  up  by  it, 
for  Museums  appealed  to  him.  The  casing  of 
the  jewel  was  in  the  first  place  superb — a  won- 
der of  carven  white  stone  of  the  Indo-Saracenic 
style.  It  stood  on  a  stone  plinth,  and  was  rich 
in  stone-tracery,  green  marble  columns  from 
Ajmir,  red  marble,  white  marble  colonnades, 
courts  with  fountains,  richly-carved  wooden 
doors,  frescoes,  inlay  and  colour.  The  orna- 
mentation of  the  tombs  of  Delhi,  the  palaces  of 
Agra  and  the  walls  of  Amber,  have  been  laid 
under  contribution  to  supply  the  designs  in 
bracket,  arch,  and  soffit;  and  stone-masons 
from  the  Jeypore  School  of  Art  have  woven 
into  the  work  the  best  that  their  hands  could 
produce.  The  building  in  essence,  if  not  in  the 
fact  of  to-day,  is  the  work  of  Freemasons. 
The  men  were  allowed  a  certain  scope  in  their 

choice  of  detail  and  the  result but  it  should 

be  seen  to  be  understood,  as  it  stands  in  those 
Imperial  Gardens.  And  observe,  the  man  who 
had  designed  it,  who  had  superintended  its 
erection,  had  said  no  word  to  indicate  that  there 
was  such  a  thing  in  the  place,  or  that  every  foot 
of  it,  from  the  domes  of  the  roof  to  the  cool 
green  chunam  dados  and  the  carving  of  the 
rims  of  the  fountains  in  the  courtyard,  was 
worth  studying!  Round  the  arches  of  the 


40  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

great  centre  court  are  written  in  Sanskrit  and 
Hindi,  texts  from  the  great  Hindu  writers  of 
old,  bearing  on  the  beauty  of  wisdom  and  the 
sanctity  of  knowledge. 

In  the  central  corridor  are  six  great  frescoes, 
each  about  nine  feet  by  five,  copies  of  illustra- 
tions in  the  Royal  Folio  of  the  Razmnameh, 
the  Mahabharata,  which  Akbar  caused  to  be 
done  by  the  best  artists  of  his  day.  The  orig- 
inal is  in  the  Museum,  and  he  who  can  steal 
it.  will  find  a  purchaser  at  any  price  up  to  fifty 
thousand  pounds. 


V. 


Of  the  Sordldness  of  the  Supreme  Government 
on  the  Revenue  Side;  and  of  the  Palace  of 
Jeypore — A  great  King's  Pleasure-House, 
and  the  Work  of  the  Servants  of  State. 

INTERNALLY,  there  is,  in  all  honesty,  no 
limit  to  the  luxury  of  the  Jeypore  Museum. 
It  revels  in  "South  Kensington"  cases — of 
the  approved  pattern — that  turn  the  beholder 
home-sick,  and  South  Kensington  labels, 
whereon  the  description,  measurements  and 
price  of  each  object,  are  fairly  printed.  These 
make  savage  one  who  knows  how  labelling  is 
bungled  in  some  of  the  Government  Museums 
— those  starved  barns  that  are  supposed  to  hold 
the  economic  exhibits,  not  of  little  States  but 
of  great  Provinces. 

The  floors  are  of  dark  red  chunam,  overlaid 
with  a  discreet  and  silent  matting;  the  doors, 
where  they  are  not  plate-glass,  are  of  carved 
wood,  no  two  alike,  hinged  by  sumptuous  brass 
hinges  on  to  marble  jambs  and  opening  without 
noise.  On  the  carved  marble  pillars  of  each 


42  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

hall  are  fixed  revolving  cases  of  the  S.  K.  M. 
pattern  to  show  textile  fabrics,  gold  lace  and 
the  like.  In  the  recesses  of  the  walls  are  more 
cases,  and  on  the  railing  of  the  gallery  that 
runs  round  each  of  the  three  great  central 
rooms,  are  fixed  low  cases  to  hold  natural  his- 
tory specimens  and  models  of  fruits  and 
vegetables. 

Hear  this,  Governments  of  India  from  the 
Punjab  to  Madras!  The  doors  come  true  to 
the  jamb,  the  cases,  which  have  been  through 
a  hot  weather,  are  neither  warped  nor  cracked, 
nor  are  there  unseemly  tallow-drops  and  flaws 
in  the  glasses.  The  maroon  cloth,  on  or 
against  which  the  exhibits  are  placed,  is  of 
close  texture,  untouched  by  the  moth,  neither 
stained  nor  meagre  nor  sunfaded;  the  revolv- 
ing cases  revolve  freely  and  without  rattling; 
there  is  not  a  speck  of  dust  from  one  end  of 
the  building  to  the  other,  because  the  menial 
staff  are  numerous  enough  to  keep  everything 
clean,  and  the  Curator's  office  is  a  veritable 
office — not  a  shed  or  a  bath-room,  or  a  loose- 
box  partitioned  from  the  main  building.  These 
things  are  so  because  money  has  been  spent  on 
the  Museum,  and  it  is  now  a  rebuke  to  all  other 
Museums  in  India,  from  Calcutta  downwards. 
Whether  it  is  not  too  good  to  be  buried  away 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  43 

in  a  Native  State  is  a  question  which  envious 
men  raise  and  answer  as  they  choose.  Not 
long  ago,  the  Editor  of  a  Bombay  paper  passed 
through  it,  but  having  the  interests  of  the 
Egocentric  Presidency  before  his  eyes,  dwelt 
more  upon  the  idea  of  the  building  than  its 
structural  beauties;  saying  that  Bombay,  who 
professed  a  weakness  for  technical  education, 
should  be  ashamed  of  herself.  And  herein  he 
was  quite  right. 

The  system  of  the  Museum  is  complete  in 
intention  as  are  its  appointments  in  design.  At 
present  there  are  some  fifteen  thousand  objects 
of  art,  "surprising  in  themselves"  as,  Count 
Smaltork  would  say,  a  complete  exposition  of 
the  arts,  from  enamels  to  pottery  and  from 
brassware  to  stone-carving,  of  the  State  of 
Jeypore.  They  are  compared  with  similar  arts 
of  other  lands.  Thus  a  Damio's  sword — a  gem 
of  lacquer-plaited  silk  and  stud-work — flanks 
the  tulwars  of  Marwar  and  the  jezails  of  Tonk ; 
and  reproductions  of  Persian  and  Russian 
brasswork  stand  side  by  side  with  the  handi- 
crafts of  the  pupils  of  the  Jeypore  School  of 
Art.  A  photograph  of  His  Highness  the  pres- 
ent Maharaja  is  set  among  the  arms,  which  are 
the  most  prominent  features  of  the  first  or 
metal  room.  As  the  villagers  enter,  they 


44  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

salaam  reverently  to  the  photo,  and  then  move 
on  slowly,  with  an  evidently  intelligent  interest 
in  what  they  see.  Ruskin  could  describe  the 
scene  admirably — pointing  out  how  reverence 
must  precede  the  study  of  art,  and  how  it  is 
good  for  Englishmen  and  Rajputs  alike  to  bow 
on  occasion  before  Gessler's  cap.  They  thumb 
the  revolving  cases  of  cloths,  do  these  rustics, 
and  artlessly  try  to  feel  the  texture  through  the 
protecting  glass.  The  main  object  of  the 
Museum  is  avowedly  provincial — to  show  the 
craftsman  of  Jeypore  the  best  that  his  pred- 
ecessprs  could  do,  and  to  show  him  what 
foreign  artists  have  done.  In  time — but  the 
Curator  of  the  Museum  has  many  schemes 
which  will  assuredly  bear  fruit  in  time,  and  it 
would  be  unfair  to  divulge  them.  Let  those 
who  doubt  the  thoroughness  of  a  Museum 
under  one  man's  control,  built,  rilled,  and  en- 
dowed with  royal  generosity — an  institution 
perfectly  independent  of  the  Government  of 
India — go  and  exhaustively  visit  Dr.  Hendley's 
charge  at  Jeypore.  Like  the  man  who  made 
the  building,  he  refuses  to  talk,  and  so  the 
greater  part  of  the  work  that  he  has  in  hand 
must  be  guessed  at. 

At  one  point,  indeed,  the  Curator  was  taken 
off  his  guard.     A  huge  map  of  the  kingdom 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  45 

showed  in  green  the  portions  that  had  been 
brought  under  irrigation,  while  blue  circles 
marked  the  towns  that  owned  dispensaries.  "I 
want  to  bring  every  man  in  the  State  within 
twenty  miles  of  a  dispensary,  and  I've  nearly 
done  it,"  said  he.  Then  he  checked  himself, 
and  went  off  to  food-grains  in  little  bottles  as 
being  neutral  and  colourless  things.  Envy  is 
forced  to  admit  that  the  arrangement  of  the 
Museum — far  too  important  a  matter  to  be 
explained  offhand — is  Continental  in  its  char- 
acter, and  has  a  definite  end  and  bearing — a 
trifle  omitted  by  many  institutions  other  than 
Museums.  But — in  fine,  what  can  one  say  of  a 
collection  whose  very  labels  are  gilt-edged! 
Shameful  extravagance?  Nothing  of  the  kind 
— only  finish,  perfectly  in  keeping  with  the  rest 
of  the  fittings — a  finish  that  we  in  kutcha  India 
have  failed  to  catch.  That  is  all ! 

From  the  Museum  go  out  through  the  city  to 
the  Maharaja's  Palace — skilfully  avoiding  the 
man  who  would  show  you  the  Maharaja's 
European  billiard-room,  and  wander  through  a 
wilderness  of  sunlit,  sleepy  courts,  gay  with 
paint  and  frescoes,  till  you  reach  an  inner 
square,  where  smiling  grey-bearded  men  squat 
at  ease  and  play  chaupur — just  such  a  game  as 
cost  the  Pandavs  the  fair  Draupadi — with  in- 


46  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

laid  dice  and  gaily  lacquered  pieces.  These  an- 
cients are  very  polite  and  will  press  you  to  play, 
but  give  no  heed  to  them,  for  chaupur  is  an  ex- 
pensive game — expensive  as  quail-fighting, 
when  you  have  backed  the  wrong  bird  and  the 
^eople  are  laughing  at  your  inexperience.  The 
Maharaja's  Palace  is  arrogantly  gay,  over- 
whelmingly rich  in  cande  Va,  painted  ceilings, 
gilt  mirrors  and  othe  eviu^nces  of  a  too  hastily 
assimilated  civilisation;  but,  if  the  evidence  of 
the  ear  can  be  trusted,  the  old,  old  game  of  in- 
trigue goes  on  as  merrily  as  of  yore.  A  figure 
in  saffron  came  out  of  a  dark  arch  into  the 
sunlight,  almost  falling  into  the  arms  of  one 
in  pink.  "Where  have  you  come  from?"  "I 
have  been  to  see "  the  name  was  unintelli- 
gible. "That  is  a  lie:  you  have  not!"  Then, 
across  the  court,  some  one  laughed  a  low  croak- 
ing laugh.  The  pink  and  saffron  figures  sep- 
arated as  though  they  had  been  shot,  and  dis- 
appeared into  separate  boltholes.  It  was  a 
curious  little  incident,  and  might  have  meant 
a  great  deal  or  just  nothing  at  all.  It  distracted 
the  attention  of  the  ancients  bowed  above  the 
chaupur  cloth. 

In  the  Palace-gardens  there  is  even  a  greater 
stillness  than  that  about  the  courts,  and  here 
nothing  of  the  West,  unless  a  hypercritical  soul 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  47 

might  take  exception  to  the  lamp-posts.  At  the 
extreme  end  lies  a  lake-like  tank  swarming  with 
muggers.  It  is  reached  through  an  opening 
under  a  block  of  zenana  buildings.  Remember- 
ing that  all  beasts  by  the  palaces  of  Kings  or 
the  temples  of  priests  in  this  country  would 
answer  to  the  name  of  'Brother,"  the  English- 
man cried  with  the  voice  ^f  faith  across  the 
water,  in  a  key  as  near  as  might  be  to  the 
melodious  howl  of  the  "monkey  faquir"  on  the 
top  of  Jakko.  And  the  mysterious  free- 
masonry did  not  fail.  At  the  far  end  of  the 
tank  rose  a  ripple  that  grew  and  grew  like  a 
thing  in  a  nightmare,  and  became  presently  an 
aged  mugger.  As  he  neared  the  shore,  there 
emerged,  the  green  slime  thick  upon  his  eye- 
lids, another  beast,  and  the  two  together 
snapped  at  a  cigar-butt — the  only  reward  for 
their  courtesy.  Then,  disgusted,  they  sank 
stern  first  with  a  gentle  sigh.  Now  a  mugger's 
sigh  is  the  most  suggestive  sound  in  animal 
speech.  It  suggested  first  the  zenana  buildings 
overhead,  the  walled  passes  through  the  purple 
hills  beyond,  a  horse  that  might  clatter  through 
the  passes  till  he  reached  the  Man  Sagar  Lake 
below  the  passes,  and  a  boat  that  might  row 
across  the  Man  Sagar  till  it  nosed  the  wall  of 
the  Palace-tank  and  then — then  uprose  the 


48  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

mugger  with  the  filth  upon  his  forehead  and 
winked  one  horny  eyelid — in  truth  he  did! — 
and  so  supplied  a  fitting  end  to  a  foolish  fiction 
of  old  days  and  things  that  might  have  been. 
But  it  must  be  unpleasant  to  live  in  a  house 
whose  base  is  washed  by  such  a  tank. 

And  so  back,  as  Pepys  says,  through  the  chu- 
named  courts,  and  among  the  gentle  sloping 
paths  between  the  orange  trees,  up  to  an  en- 
trance of  the  Palace  guarded  by  two  rusty 
brown  dogs  from  Kabul,  each  big  as  a  man, 
and  each  requiring  a  man's  charpoy  to  sleep 
upon.  Very  gay  was  the  front  of  the  Palace, 
very  brilliant  were  the  glimpses  of  the  damask- 
couched,  gilded  rooms  within,  and  very,  very 
civilised  were  the  lamp-posts  with  Ram  Sing's 
monogram,  devised  to  look  like  V.  R.  at  the 
bottom,  and  a  coronet,  as  hath  been  shown, 
at  the  top.  An  unseen  brass  band  among  the 
orange  bushes  struck  up  the  overture  of  the 
Bronze  Horse.  Those  who  know  the  music 
will  see  at  once  that  that  was  the  only  tune 
which  exactly  and  perfectly  fitted  the  scene  and 
its  surroundings.  It  was  a  coincidence  and  a 
revelation. 

In  his  time  and  when  he  was  not  fighting, 
Jey  Singh  the  Second,  who  built  the  city,  was 
a  great  astronomer — a  royal  Omar  Khayyam, 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  49 

for  he,  like  the  tent-maker  of  Nishapur,  re- 
formed a  calendar,  and  strove  to  wring1  their 
mysteries  from  the  stars  with  instruments 
worthy  of  a  King.  But  in  the  end  he  wrote 
that  the  goodness  of  the  Almighty  was  above 
everything,  and  died ;  leaving  his  observatory 
to  decay  without  the  Palace-grounds. 

From  the  Bronze  Horse  to  the  grass-grown 
enclosure  that  holds  the  Yantr  Samrat,  or 
Prince  of  Dials,  is  rather  an  abrupt  passage. 
Jey  Singh  built  him  a  dial  with  a  gnomon  some 
ninety  feet  high,  to  throw  a  shadow  against  the 
sun,  and  the  gnomon  stands  today,  though 
there  is  grass  in  the  kiosque  at  the  top  and  the 
flight  of  steps  up  the  hypotenuse  is  worn.  He 
built  also  a  zodiacal  dial — twelve  dials  upon 
one  platform — to  find  the  moment  of  true  noon 
at  any  time  of  the  year,  and  hollowed  out  of  the 
earth  place  for  two  hemispherical  cups,  cut  by 
belts  of  stone,  for  comparative  observations. 

He  made  cups  for  calculating  eclipses,  and  a 
mural  quadrant  and  many  other  strange  things 
of  stone  and  mortar,  of  which  people  hardly 
know  the  names  and  but  very  little  of  the  uses. 
Once,  said  the  keeper  of  two  tiny  elephants,  In- 
ditr  and  Har,  a  Sahib  came  with  the  Burra  Lat 
Sahib,  and  spent  eight  days  in  the  enclosure  of 
the  great  neglected  observatory,  seeing  and 


50  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

writing  things  in  a  book.  But  he  understood 
Sanskrit — the  Sanskrit  upon  the  faces  of  the 
dials,  and  the  meaning  of  the  gnoma  and 
pointers.  Now-a-days  no  one  understands  San- 
skrit— not  even  the  Pundits ;  but  without  doubt 
Jey  Singh  was  a  great  man. 

The  hearer  echoed  the  statement,  though  he 
knew  nothing  of  astronomy,  and  of  all  the 
wonders  in  the  observatory  was  only  struck  by 
the  fact  that  the  shadow  of  the  Prince  of  Dials 
moved  over  its  vast  plate  so  quickly  that  it 
seemed  as  though  Time,  wroth  at  the  insolence 
of  Jey  Singh,  had  loosed  the  Horses  of  the  Sun 
and  were  sweeping  everything — dainty  Palace- 
gardens  and  ruinous  instruments — into  the 
darkness  of  eternal  night.  So  he  went  away 
chased  by  the  shadow  on  the  dial,  and  returned 
to  the  hotel,  where  he  found  men  who  said — 
this  must  be  a  catch-word  of  Globe-Trotters — 
that  they  were  "much  pleased  at"  Amber.  They 
further  thought  that  "house-rent  would  be 
cheap  in  those  parts,"  and  sniggered  over  the 
witticism.  Jey  Singh,  in  spite  of  a  few  discred- 
itable laches,  was  a  temperate  and  tolerant 
man;  but  he  would  have  hanged  those  Globe- 
Trotters  in  their  trunk-straps  as  high  as  the 
Yantr  Samrat. 

Next  morning,  in  the  gray  dawn,  the  Eng- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  51 

lishman  rose  up  and  shook  the  sand  of  Jeypore 
from  his  feet,  and  went  with  Master  Coryatt 
and  Sir  Thomas  Roe  to  "Adsmir,"  wondering 
whether  a  year  in  Jeypore  would  be  sufficient 
to  exhaust  its  interest,  and  why  he  had  not  gone 
out  to  the  tombs  of  the  dead  Kings  and  the 
passes  of  Gulta  and  the  fort  of  Motee  Dungri. 
But  what  he  wondered  at  most — knowing  how 
many  men  who  have  in  any  way  been  connected 
with  the  birth  of  an  institution,  do,  to  the  end 
of  their  days,  continue  to  drag  forward  and  ex- 
hume their  labours  and  the  honours  that  did 
not  come  to  them — was  the  work  of  the  two 
men  who,  together  for  years  past,  have  been 
pushing  Jeypore  along  the  stone-dressed  paths 
of  civilisation,  peace  and  comfort.  "Servants 
of  the  Raj"  they  called  themselves,  and  surely 
they  have  served  the  Raj  past  all  praise.  The 
pen  and  tact  of  a  Wilfred  Blunt  are  needed  to 
fitly  lash  their  reticence.  But  the  people  in  the 
city  and  the  camel-driver  from  the  sand-hills 
told  of  them.  They  themselves  held  their  peace 
as  to  what  they  had  done,  and,  when  pressed, 
referred  —  crowning  baseness  —  to  reports. 
Printed  ones ! 


VI. 


Showing  how  Her  Majesty's  Mails  went  to 
Udaipur  and  fell  out  by  the  Way. 

ARRIVED  at  Ajmir,  the  Englishman  fell 
among  tents  pitched  under  the  shadow  of 
a  huge  banian  tree,  and  in  them  was  a  Punjabi. 
Now  there  is  no  brotherhood  like  the  brother- 
hood of  the  Pauper  Province;  for  it  is  even 
greater  than  the  genial  and  unquestioning  hos- 
pitality which,  in  spite  of  the  loafer  and  the 
Globe-Trotter,  seems  to  exist  throughout  In- 
dia. Ajmir  being  British  territory,  though  the 
inhabitants  are  allowed  to  carry  arms,  is  the 
headquarters  of  many  of  the  banking  firms  who 
lend  to  the  Native  States.  The  complaint  of  the 
Setts  to-day  is  that  their  trade  is  bad,  because 
an  unsympathetic  Government  induces  the  Na- 
tive States  to  make  railways  and  become  pros- 
perous. "Look  at  Jodhpur!"  said  a  gentleman 
whose  possessions  might  be  roughly  estimated 
at  anything  between  thirty  and  forty-five  lakhs. 
"Time  was  when  Jodhpur  was  always  in  debt — 
and  not  so  long  ago  either.  Now,  they've  got 
a  railroad  and  are  carrying  salt  over  it,  and,  as 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  53 

sure  as  I  stand  here,  they  have  a  surplus!  What 
can  we  do?"  Poor  pauper!  However,  he 
makes  a  little  profit  on  the  fluctuations  in  the 
coinage  of  the  States  round  him,  for  every 
small  king  seems  to  have  the  privilege  of  strik- 
ing his  own  image  and  inflicting  the  Great  Ex- 
change Question  on  his  subjects.  It  is  a  poor 
State  that  has  not  two  seers  and  five  different 
rupees. 

From  a  criminal  point  of  view,  Ajmir  is  not 
a  pleasant  place.  The  Native  States  lie  all 
round  and  about  it,  and  portions  of  the  district 
are  ten  miles  off,  Native  State-locked  on  every 
side.  Thus  the  criminal,  who  may  be  a  bur- 
glarious Meena  lusting  for  the  money  bags  of 
the  Setts,  or  a  Peshawari  down  south  on  a  cold 
weather  tour,  has  his  plan  of  campaign  much 
simplified.  The  Englishman  made  only  a  short 
stay  in  the  town,  hearing  that  there  was  to  be  a 
ceremony — tamasha  covers  a  multitude  of 
things — at  the  capital  of  His  Highness  the 
Maharana  of  Udaipur — a  town  some  hundred 
and  eighty  miles  south  of  Ajmir,  not  known 
to  many  people  beyond  Viceroys  and  their 
Staffs  and  the  officials  of  the  Rajputana 
Agency.  So  he  took  a  Neemuch  train  in  the 
very  early  morning  and,  with  the  Punjabi,  went 
due  south  to  Chitor,  the  point  of  departure  for 


54  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

Udaipur.  In  time  the  Aravalis  gave  place  to  a 
dead,  flat,  stone-strewn  plain,  thick  with  dhak- 
j  tingle.  Later  the  date-palm  fraternised  with 
the  dhak,  and  low  hills  stood  on  either  side  of 
the  line.  To  this  succeeded  a  tract  rich  in  pure 
white  stone,  the  line  was  ballasted  with  it.  Then 
came  more  low  hills,  each  with  comb  of  splin- 
tered rock  a-top,  overlooking  dhak- jungle  and 
villages  fenced  with  thorns — places  that  at  once 
declared  themselves  tigerish.  Last,  the  huge 
bulk  of  Chitor  showed  itself  on  the  horizon. 
The  train  crossed  the  Cumber  River  and  halted 
almost  in  the  shadow  of  the  hills  on  which  the 
old  pride  of  Udaipur  was  set. 

It  is  difficult  to  give  an  idea  of  the  Chitor 
fortress;  but  the  long  line  of  brown  wall 
springing  out  of  bush-covered  hill  suggested  at 
once  those  pictures,  such  as  the  Graphic  pub- 
lishes of  the  Inflexible  or  the  Devastation — gi- 
gantic men-of-war  with  a  very  low  free-board 
ploughing  through  green  sea.  The  hill  on  which 
the  fort  stands  is  ship-shaped  and  some  miles 
long,  and,  from  a  distance,  every  inch  appears 
to  be  scarped  and  guarded.  But  there  was  no 
time  to  see  Chitor.  The  business  of  the  day  was 
to  get,  if  possible,  to  Udaipur  from  Chitor  Sta- 
tion, which  was  composed  of  one  platform,  one 
telegraph-room,  a  bench  and  several  vicious 
dogs. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  55 

The  State  of  Udaipur  is  as  backward  as  Jey- 
pore  is  advanced — if  we  judge  it  by  the  stand- 
ard of  civilisation.  It  does  not  approve  of  the 
incursions  of  Englishmen,  and,  to  do  it  justice, 
it  thoroughly  succeeds  in  conveying  its  silent 
sulkiness.  Still,  where  there  is  one  English 
Resident,  one  Doctor,  one  Engineer,  one  Settle- 
ment Officer,  and  one  Missionary,  there  must 
be  a  mail  at  least  once  a  day.  There  was  a 
mail.  The  Englishman,  men  said,  might  go  by 
it  if  he  liked,  or  he  might  not  Then,  with  a 
great  sinking  of  the  heart,  he  began  to  realise 
that  his  caste  was  of  no  value  in  the  stony  pas- 
tures of  Mewar,  among  the  swaggering  gentle- 
men who  were  so  lavishly  adorned  with  arms. 
There  was  a  mail,  the  ghost  of  a  tonga,  with 
tattered  side-cloths  and  patched  roof,  incon- 
ceivably filthy  within  and  without,  and  it  was 
Her  Majesty's.  There  was  another  tonga — an 
aram  tonga — but  the  Englishman  was  not  to 
have  it.  It  was  reserved  for  a  Rajput  Thakur 
who  was  going  to  Udaipur  with  his  "tail."  The 
Thakur,  in  claret-coloured  velvet  with  a  blue 
turban,  a  revolver — Army  pattern — a  sword, 
and  five  or  six  friends,  also  with  swords,  came 
by  and  endorsed  the  statement.  Now,  the  mail 
tonga  had  a  wheel  which  was  destined  to  be- 
come the  Wheel  of  Fate,  and  to  lead  to  many; 


56  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

curious  things.  Two  diseased  yellow  ponies 
were  extracted  from  a  dung-hill  and  yoked  to 
the  tonga ;  and  after  due  deliberation  Her  Maj- 
esty's Mail  started,  the  Thakur  following. 

In  twelve  hours,  or  thereabouts,  the  seventy 
miles  between  Chitor  and  Udaipur  would  be  ac- 
complished. Behind  the  tonga  cantered  an 
armed  sowar.  He  was  the  guard.  The  Tha- 
kur's  tonga  came  up  with  a  rush,  ran  deliberate- 
ly across  the  bows  of  the  Englishman,  shipped 
a  pony,  and  passed  on.  One  lives  and  learns. 
The  Thakur  seems  to  object  to  following  the 
foreigner. 

At  the  halting-stages,  once  in  every  six  miles, 
that  is  to  say,  the  ponies  were  carefully  un- 
dressed and  all  their  accoutrements  fitted  more 
or  less  accurately  on  to  the  backs  of  the  ponies 
that  might  happen  to  be  near :  the  released  ani- 
mals finding  their  way  back  to  their  stables 
alone  and  unguided.  There  were  no  syces,  and 
the  harness  hung  on  by  special  dispensation  of 
Providence.  Still  the  ride  over  a  good  road, 
driven  through  a  pitilessly  stony  country,  had 
its  charms  for  a  while.  At  sunset  the  low  hills 
turned  to  opal  and  wine-red,  and  the  brown 
dust  flew  up  pure  gold ;  for  the  tonga  was  run- 
ning straight  into  the  sinking  sun.  Now  and 
again  would  pass  a  traveller  on  a  camel,  or  a 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  57 

gang  of  Bunjarras  with  their  pack-bullocks  and 
their  women;  and  the  sun  touched  the  brasses 
of  their  swords  and  guns  till  the  poor  wretches 
seemed  rich  merchants  come  back  from  travel- 
ling with  Sindbad. 

On  a  rock  on  the  right  hand  side,  thirty-four 
great  vultures  were  gathered  over  the  carcase 
of  a  steer.  And  this  was  an  evil  omen.  They 
made  unseemly  noises  as  the  tonga  passed,  and 
a  raven  came  out  of  a  bush  on  the  right  and 
answered  them.  To  crown  all,  one  of  the  hide 
and  skin  castes  sat  on  the  left  hand  side  of  the 
road,  cutting  up  some  of  the  flesh  that  he  had 
stolen  from  the  vultures.  Could  a  man  desire 
three  more  inauspicious  signs  for  a  night's 
travel  ?  Twilight  came,  and  the  hills  were  alive 
with  strange  noises,  as  the  red  moon,  nearly  at 
her  full,  rose  over  Chitor.  To  the  low  hills  of 
the  mad  geological  formation,  the  tumbled 
strata  that  seem  to  obey  no  law,  succeeded  level 
ground,  the  pasture  lands  of  Mewar,  cut  by  the 
Beruch  and  Wyan,  streams  running  over 
smooth  water-worn  rock,  and,  as  the  heavy  em- 
bankments and  ample  waterways  showed,  very 
lively  in  the  rainy  season. 

In  this  region  occurred  the  last  and  most  in- 
auspicious omen  of  all.  Something  had  gone 
wrong  with  a  crupper,  a  piece  of  blue  and  white 


58  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

punkah-cord.  The  Englishman  pointed  it  out, 
and  the  driver,  descending,  danced  on  that 
lonely  road  an  unholy  dance,  singing  the  while : 
"The  dumchi!  The  dumchi!  The  dumchi!" 
in  a  shrill  voice.  Then  he  returned  and  drove 
on,  while  the  Englishman  wondered  into  what 
land  of  lunatics  he  was  heading.  At  an  aver- 
age speed  of  six  miles  an  hour,  it  is  possible  to 
see  a  great  deal  of  the  country;  and,  under 
brilliant  moonlight,  Mewar  was  desolately 
beautiful.  There  was  no  night  traffic  on  the 
road — no  one  except  the  patient  sowar,  his 
shadow  an  inky  blot  on  white,  cantering  twenty 
yards  behind.  Once  the  tonga  strayed  into  a 
company  of  date-trees  that  fringed  the  path, 
and  once  rattled  through  a  little  town,  and 
once  the  ponies  shyed  at  what  the  driver  said 
was  a  rock;  but  it  jumped  up  in  the  moonlight 
and  went  away. 

Then  came  a  great  blasted  heath  whereon 
nothing  was  more  than  six  inches  high — a  wil- 
derness covered  with  grass  and  low  thorn ;  and 
here,  as  nearly  as  might  be  midway  between 
Chitor  and  Udaipur,  the  Wheel  of  Fate,  which 
had  been  for  some  time  beating  against  the  side 
of  the  tonga,  came  off,  and  Her  Majesty's 
Mails,  two  bags  including  parcels,  collapsed  on 
the  wayside;  while  the  Englishman  repented 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  59 

him  that  he  had  neglected  the  omens  of  the  vul- 
tures and  the  raven,  the  low  caste  man  and  the 
mad  driver. 

There  was  a  consultation  and  an  examina- 
tion of  the  wheel ;  but  the  whole  tonga  was  rot- 
ten, and  the  axle  was  smashed  and  the  axle-pins 
were  bent  and  nearly  red-hot.  "It  is  nothing," 
said  the  driver,  "the  mail  often  does  this.  What 
is  a  wheel?"  He  took  a  big  stone  and  began 
hammering  the  wheel  proudly  on  the  tyre,  to 
show  that  that  at  least  was  sound.  A  hasty 
court-martial  revealed  that  there  was  absolutely 
not  one  single  "breakdown  tonga"  on  the  whole 
road  between  Chitor  and  Udaipur. 

Now  this  wilderness  was  so  utterly  waste 
that  not  even  the  barking  of  a  dog  or  the  sound 
of  a  nightfowl  could  be  heard.  Luckily  the 
Thakur  had,  some  twenty  miles  back,  stepped 
out  to  smoke  by  the  roadside,  and  his  tonga 
had  been  passed  meanwhile.  The  sowar  was 
sent  back  to  find  that  tonga  and  bring  it  on.  He 
cantered  into  the  haze  of  the  moonlight  and  dis- 
appeared. Then  said  the  driver: — "Had  there 
been  no  tonga  behind  us,  I  should  have  put  the 
mails  on  a  horse,  because  the  Sirkar's  dak  can- 
not stop."  The  Englishman  sat  down  upon  the 
parcels-bag,  for  he  felt  that  there  was  trouble 
coming.  The  driver  looked  East  and  West  and 


60  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

said: — "I  too  will  go  and  see  if  the  tonga  can 
be  found,  for  the  Sirkar's  dak  cannot  stop. 
Meantime,  O  Sahib,  do  you  take  care  of  the 
mails — one  bag  and  one  bag  of  parcels."  So  he 
ran  swiftly  into  the  haze  of  the  moonlight  and 
was  lost,  and  the  Englishman  was  left  alone  in 
charge  of  Her  Majesty's  Mails,  two  unhappy 
ponies  and  a  lop-sided  tonga.  He  lit  fires,  for 
the  night  was  bitterly  cold,  and  only  mourned 
that  he  could  not  destroy  the  whole  of  the  terri- 
tories of  His  Highness  the  Maharana  of  Udai- 
pur.  But  he  managed  to  raise  a  very  fine  blaze, 
before  he  reflected  that  all  this  trouble  was  his 
own  fault  for  wandering  into  Native  States  un- 
desirous  of  Englishmen. 

The  ponies  coughed  dolorously  from  time  to 
time,  but  they  could  not  lift  the  weight  of  a 
dead  silence  that  seemed  to  be  crushing  the 
earth.  After  an  interval  measurable  by  cen- 
turies, sowar,  driver  and  Thakur's  tonga  re- 
appeared; the  latter  full  to  the  brim  and  bub- 
bling over  with  humanity  and  bedding.  "We 
will  now,"  said  the  driver,  not  deigning  to 
notice  the  Englishman  who  had  been  on  guard 
over  the  mails,  "put  the  Sirkar's  dak  into  this 
tonga  and  go  forward."  Amiable  heathen!  He 
was  going,  he  said  so,  to  leave  the  Englishman 
to  wait  in  the  Sahara,  for  certainly  thirty  hours 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  61 

and  perhaps  forty-eight.  Tongas  are  scarce  on 
the  Udaipur  road.  There  are  a  few  occasions 
in  life  when  it  is  justifiable  to  delay  Her  Maj- 
esty's Mails.  This  was  one  of  them.  Seating 
himself  upon  the  parcels-bag,  the  Englishman 
cried  in  what  was  intended  to  be  a  terrible 
voice,  but  the  silence  soaked  it  up  and  left  only 
a  thin  trickle  of  sound,  that  any  one  who 
touched  the  bags  would  be  hit  with  a  stick, 
several  times,  over  the  head.  The  bags  were 
the  only  link  between  him  and  the  civilisation 
he  had  so  rashly  foregone.  And  there  was  a 
pause. 

The  Thakur  put  his  head  out  of  the  tonga 
and  spoke  shrilly  in  Mewari.  The  Englishman 
replied  in  English-Urdu.  The  Thakur  with- 
drew his  head,  and  from  certain  grunts  that 
followed  seemed  to  be  wakening  his  retainers. 
Then  two  men  fell  sleepily  out  of  the  tonga  and 
walked  into  the  night.  "Come  in,"  said  the 
Thakur,  "you  and  your  baggage.  My  banduq 
is  in  that  corner;  be  careful."  The  English- 
man, taking  a  mail-bag  in  one  hand  for  safety's 
sake — the  wilderness  inspires  an  Anglo-Indian 
Cockney  with  unreasoning  fear — climbed  into 
the  tonga,  which  was  then  loaded  far  beyond 
Plimsoll  mark,  and  the  procession  resumed  its 
journey.  Every  one  in  the  vehicle, — it  seemed 


62  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

as  full  as  the  railway  carriage  that  held  Alice 
Through  the  Looking  Glass — was  Sahib  and 
Hazur.  Except  the  Englishman.  He  was 
simple  turn,  and  a  revolver,  Army  pattern,  was 
printing  every  diamond  in  the  chequer-work  of 
its  handle,  into  his  right  hip.  When  men  desired 
him  to  move,  they  prodded  him  with  the 
handles  of  tulwars  till  they  had  coiled  him  into 
an  uneasy  lump.  Then  they  slept  upon  him,  or 
cannoned  against  him  as  the  tonga  bumped.  It 
was  an  aram  tonga  or  tonga  for  ease.  That  was 
the  bitterest  thought  of  all. 

In  due  season  the  harness  began  to  break 
once  every  five  minutes,  and  the  driver  vowed 
that  the  wheels  would  give  way  also. 

After  eight  hours  in  one  position,  it  is  ex- 
cessively difficult  to  walk,  still  more  difficult  to 
climb  up  an  unknown  road  into  a  dak-bunga- 
low ;  but  he  who  has  sought  sleep  on  an  arsenal 
and  under  the  bodies  of  burly  Rajputs,  can  do 
it.  The  grey  dawn  brought  Udaipur  and  a 
French  bedstead.  As  the  tonga  jingled  away, 
the  Englishman  heard  the  familiar  crack  of 
broken  harness.  So  he  was  not  the  Jonah  he 
had  been  taught  to  consider  himself  all  through 
that  night  of  penance! 

A  jackal  sat  in  the  verandah  and  howled  him 
to  sleep,  wherein  he  dreamed  that  he  had  caught 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  63 

a  Viceroy  under  the  walls  of  Chitor  and  beaten 
him  with  a  tulwar  till  he  turned  into  a  dak-pony 
whose  near  foreleg  was  perpetually  coming  off, 
and  who  would  say  nothing  but  urn  when  he 
was  asked  why  he  had  not  built  a  railway  from 
Chitor  to  Udaipur. 


VII. 


To  tic  king  the  Children  of  the  Sun  and  their 
City,  and  the  Hat-marked  Caste  and  their 
Merits,  and  a  Good  Man's  Works  in  the 
Wilderness. 

T  T  was  worth  a  night's  discomfort  and  a  re- 
•*•  volver-bed  to  sleep  upon— this  city  of  the 
Suryavansi,  hidden  among  the  hills  that  en- 
compass the  great  Pichola  lake.  Truly,  the 
King  who  governs  to-day  is  wise  in  his  deter- 
mination to  have  no  railroad  to  his  capital.  His 
predecessor  was  more  or  less  enlightened,  and 
had  he  lived  a  few  years  longer,  would  have 
brought  the  iron  horse  through  the  Dobarri — 
the  green  gate  which  is  the  entrance  of  the 
Girwa  or  girdle  of  hills  round  Udaipur;  and, 
with  the  train,  would  have  come  the  tourist 
who  would  have  scratched  his  name  upon  the 
Temple  of  Garuda  and  laughed  horse-laughs 
upon  the  lake.  Let  us,  therefore,  be  thankful 
that  the  capital  of  Mewar  is  hard  to  reach,  and 
go  abroad  into  a  new  and  a  strange  land  rejoic- 
ing. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  65 

Each  man  who  has  any  claims  to  respecta- 
bility walks  armed,  carrying  his  tulwar 
sheathed  in  his  hand,  or  hung  by  a  short  sling 
of  cotton  passing  over  the  shoulder,  under  his 
left  arm-pit.  His  matchlock,  or  smooth-bore  if 
he  has  one,  is  borne  naked  on  the  shoulder. 

Now  it  is  possible  to  carry  any  number  of 
lethal  weapons  without  being  actually  dan- 
gerous. An  unhandy  revolver,  for  instance,  may 
be  worn  for  years,  and,  at  the  end,  accomplish 
nothing  more  noteworthy  than  the  murder  of 
its  owner.  But  the  Rajput's  weapons  are  not 
meant  for  display.  The  Englishman  caught  a 
camel-driver  who  talked  to  him  in  Mewari, 
which  is  a  heathenish  dialect,  something  like 
Multani  to  listen  to;  and  the  man,  very  grace- 
fully and  courteously,  handed  him  his  sword 
and  matchlock,  the  latter  a  heavy  stump-stock 
arrangement  without  pretence  of  sights.  The 
blade  was  as  sharp  as  a  razor,  and  the  gun  in 
perfect  working  order.  The  coiled  fuse  on  the 
stock  was  charred  at  the  end,  and  the  curled 
ram's-horn  powder-horn  opened  as  readily  as  a 
whisky-flask  that  is  much  handled.  Unfor- 
tunately, ignorance  of  Mewari  prevented  con- 
versation; so  the  camel-driver  resumed  his  ac- 
coutrements and  jogged  forward  on  his  beast — 
a  superb  black  one,  with  the  short  curled  hub* 


66  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

shee  hair — while  the  Englishman  went  to  the 
City,  which  is  built  on  hills  on  the  borders  of 
the  lake.  By  the  way,  everything  in  Udaipur  is 
built  on  a  hill.  There  is  no  level  ground  in  the 
place,  except  the  Durbar  Gardens,  of  which 
more  hereafter.  Because  colour  holds  the  eye 
more  than  form,  the  first  thing  noticeable  was 
neither  temple  nor  fort,  but  an  ever-recurring 
picture,  painted  in  the  rudest  form  of  native 
art,  of  a  man  on  horseback  armed  with  a  lance, 
charging  an  elephant-of-war.  As  a  rule,  the 
elephant  was  depicted  on  one  side  the  house- 
door  and  the  rider  on  the  other.  There  was  no 
representation  of  an  army  behind.  The  figures 
stood  alone  upon  the  whitewash  on  house  and 
wall  and  gate,  again  and  again  and  again.  A 
highly  intelligent  priest  grunted  that  it  was  a 
tazwir;  a  private  of  the  Maharana's  regular 
army  suggested  that  it  was  a  hathi;  while  a 
wheat-seller,  his  sword  at  his  side,  was  equally 
certain  that  it  was  a  Raja.  Beyond  that  point, 
his  knowledge  did  not  go.  The  explanation  of 
the  picture  is  this.  In  the  days  when  Raja  Maun 
of  Amber  put  his  sword  at  Akbar's  service  and 
won  for  him  great  kingdoms,  Akbar  sent  an 
army  against  Mewar,  whose  then  ruler  was 
Pertap  Singh,  most  famous  of  all  the  princes 
of  Mewar.  Selim,  Akbar's  son,  led  the  army  of 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  67 

the  Toork ;  the  Rajputs  met  them  at  the  pass  of 
Huldighat  and  fought  till  one-half  of  their 
bands  were  slain.  Once,  in  the  press  of  battle, 
Pertap,  on  his  great  horse,  "Chytak,"  came 
within  striking  distance  of  Selim's  elephant, 
and  slew  the  mahout,  but  Selim  escaped,  to  be- 
come Jehangir  afterwards,  and  the  Rajputs 
were  broken.  That  was  three  hundred  years 
ago,  and  men  have  reduced  the  picture  to  a  sort 
of  diagram  that  the  painter  dashes  in,  in  a  few 
minutes,  without,  it  would  seem,  knowing  what 
he  is  commemorating.  Elsewhere,  the  story  is 
drawn  in  line  even  more  roughly. 

Thinking  of  these  things,  the  Englishman 
made  shift  to  get  at  the  City,  and  presently 
came  to  a  tall  gate,  the  gate  of  the  Sun,  on 
which  the  elephant-spikes,  that  he  had  seen  rot- 
ted with  rust  at  Amber,  were  new  and  pointed 
and  effective.  The  City  gates  are  said  to  be 
shut  at  night,  and  there  is  a  story  of  a  Vice- 
roy's Guard-of-Honour  which  arrived  before 
daybreak,  being  compelled  to  crawl  ignomin- 
iously  man  by  man  through  a  little  wicket  gate, 
while  the  horses  had  to  wait  without  till  sun- 
rise. But  a  civilised  yearning  for  the  utmost 
advantages  of  octroi,  and  not  a  fierce  fear  of 
robbery  and  wrong,  is  at  the  bottom  of  the 
continuance  of  this  custom.  The  walls  of  the 


66  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

shee  hair — while  the  Englishman  went  to  the 
City,  which  is  built  on  hills  on  the  borders  of 
the  lake.  By  the  way,  everything  in  Udaipur  is 
built  on  a  hill.  There  is  no  level  ground  in  the 
place,  except  the  Durbar  Gardens,  of  which 
more  hereafter.  Because  colour  holds  the  eye 
more  than  form,  the  first  thing  noticeable  was 
neither  temple  nor  fort,  but  an  ever-recurring 
picture,  painted  in  the  rudest  form  of  native 
art,  of  a  man  on  horseback  armed  with  a  lance, 
charging  an  elephant-of-war.  As  a  rule,  the 
elephant  was  depicted  on  one  side  the  house- 
door  and  the  rider  on  the  other.  There  was  no 
representation  of  an  army  behind.  The  figures 
stood  alone  upon  the  whitewash  on  house  and 
wall  and  gate,  again  and  again  and  again.  A 
highly  intelligent  priest  grunted  that  it  was  a 
tazivir;  a  private  of  the  Maharana's  regular 
army  suggested  that  it  was  a  hathi;  while  a 
wheat-seller,  his  sword  at  his  side,  was  equally 
certain  that  it  was  a  Raja.  Beyond  that  point, 
his  knowledge  did  not  go.  The  explanation  of 
the  picture  is  this.  In  the  days  when  Raja  Maun 
of  Amber  put  his  sword  at  Akbar's  service  and 
won  for  him  great  kingdoms,  Akbar  sent  an 
army  against  Mewar,  whose  then  ruler  was 
Pertap  Singh,  most  famous  of  all  the  princes 
of  Mewar.  Selim,  Akbar's  son,  led  the  army  of 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  67 

the  Toork ;  the  Rajputs  met  them  at  the  pass  of 
Huldighat  and  fought  till  one-half  of  their 
bands  were  slain.  Once,  in  the  press  of  battle, 
Pertap,  on  his  great  horse,  "Chytak,"  came 
within  striking  distance  of  Selim's  elephant, 
and  slew  the  mahout,  but  Selim  escaped,  to  be- 
come Jehangir  afterwards,  and  the  Rajputs 
were  broken.  That  was  three  hundred  years 
ago,  and  men  have  reduced  the  picture  to  a  sort 
of  diagram  that  the  painter  dashes  in,  in  a  few 
minutes,  without,  it  would  seem,  knowing  what 
he  is  commemorating.  Elsewhere,  the  story  is 
drawn  in  line  even  more  roughly. 

Thinking  of  these  things,  the  Englishman 
made  shift  to  get  at  the  City,  and  presently 
came  to  a  tall  gate,  the  gate  of  the  Sun,  on 
which  the  elephant-spikes,  that  he  had  seen  rot- 
ted with  rust  at  Amber,  were  new  and  pointed 
and  effective.  The  City  gates  are  said  to  be 
shut  at  night,  and  there  is  a  story  of  a  Vice- 
roy's Guard-of-Honour  which  arrived  before 
daybreak,  being  compelled  to  crawl  ignomin- 
iously  man  by  man  through  a  little  wicket  gate, 
while  the  horses  had  to  wait  without  till  sun- 
rise. But  a  civilised  yearning  for  the  utmost 
advantages  of  octroi,  and  not  a  fierce  fear  of 
robbery  and  wrong,  is  at  the  bottom  of  the 
continuance  of  this  custom.  The  walls  of  the 


70  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

are  under  feudal  obligations  to  supply  their 
Head  with  so  many  horsemen  per  thousand 
rupees;  but  whether  the  chutoond  justifies  its 
name  and  what  is  the  exact  extent  of  the  "tail" 
leviable,  they,  and  perhaps  the  Rajputana 
Agency,  alone  know.  They  are  quiet,  give  no 
trouble  except  to  the  wild  boar,  and  personally 
are  magnificent  men  to  look  at.  The  Rajput 
shows  his  breeding  in  his  hands  and  feet,  which 
are  almost  disproportionately  small,  and  as  well 
shaped  as  those  of  women.  His  stirrups  and 
sword-handles  are  even  more  unusable  by 
Westerns  than  those  elsewhere  in  India,  while 
the  Bhil's  knife-handle  gives  as  large  a  grip  as 
an  English  one.  Now  the  little  Bhil  is  an  abor- 
igine, which  is  humiliating  to  think  of.  His 
tongue,  which  may  frequently  be  heard  in  the 
City,  seems  to  possess  some  variant  of  the  Zulu 
click;  which  gives  it  a  weird  and  unearthly 
character.  From  the  main  gate  of  the  City  the 
Englishman  climbed  uphill  towards  the  Palace 
and  the  Jugdesh  Temple  built  by  one  Jaggat 
Singh  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century.  This 
building  must  be — but  ignorance  is  a  bad  guide 
— Jain  in  character.  From  basement  to  the 
stone  socket  of  the  temple  flag-staff,  it  is  carved 
in  high  relief  with  friezes  of  elephants,  men, 
gods,  and  monsters  in  wearying  profusion. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  71 

The  management  of  the  temple  have  daubed 
a  large  portion  of  the  building  with  whitewash, 
for  which  their  revenues  should  be  "cut"  for 
a  year  or  two.  The  main  shrine  holds  a  large 
brazen  image  of  Garuda,  and,  in  the  corners  of 
the  courtyard  of  the  main  pile  are  shrines  to 
Mahadeo,  and  the  jovial,  pot-bellied  Ganesh. 
There  is  no  repose  in  this  architecture,  and  the 
entire  effect  is  one  of  repulsion;  for  the  clus- 
tered figures  of  man  and  brute  seem  always  on 
the  point  of  bursting  into  unclean,  wriggling 
life.  But  it  may  be  that  the  builders  of  this 
form  of  house  desired  to  put  the  fear  of  all 
their  many  gods  into  the  heart  of  the  worship- 
pers. 

From  the  temple  whose  steps  are  worn 
smooth  by  the  feet  of  men,  and  whose  courts 
are  full  of  the  faint  smell  of  stale  flowers  and 
old  incense,  the  Englishman  went  to  the  Pal- 
aces which  crown  the  highest  hill  overlooking 
the  City.  Here,  too,  whitewash  had  been  un- 
sparingly applied,  but  the  excuse  was  that  the 
stately  fronts  and  the  pierced  screens  were  built 
of  a  perishable  stone  which  needed  protection 
against  the  weather.  One  projecting  window 
in  the  facade  of  the  main  Palace  has  been 
treated  with  Minton  tiles.  Luckily  it  was  too 
far  up  the  wall  for  anything  more  than  the 


72  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

colour  to  be  visible,  and  the  pale  blue  against 
the  pure  white  was  effective. 

A  picture  of  Ganesh  looks  out  over  the  main 
courtyard  which  is  entered  by  a  triple  gate,  and 
hard  by  is  the  place  where  the  King's  elephants 
fight  over  a  low  masonry  wall.  In  the  side  of 
the  hill  on  which  the  Palaces  stand,  is  built 
stabling  for  horses  and  elephants — proof  that 
the  architects  of  old  must  have  understood  their 
business  thoroughly.  The  Palace  is  not  a  "show 
place,"  and,  consequently,  the  Englishman  did 
not  see  much  of  the  interior.  But  he  passed 
through  open  gardens  with  tanks  and  pavilions, 
very  cool  and  restful,  till  he  came  suddenly 
upon  the  Pichola  lake,  and  forgot  altogether 
about  the  Palace.  He  found  a  sheet  of  steel- 
blue  water,  set  in  purple  and  grey  hills,  bound 
in,  on  one  side,  by  marble  bunds,  the  fair  white 
walls  of  the  Palace,  and  the  grey,  time-worn 
ones  of  the  city ;  and,  on  the  other,  fading  away 
through  the  white  of  shallow  water,  and  the 
soft  green  of  weed,  marsh,  and  rank-pastured 
river  field,  into  the  land.  To  enjoy  open  water 
thoroughly,  live  for  a  certain  number  of  years 
barred  from  anything  better  than  the  yearly 
swell  and  shrinkage  of  one  of  the  Five  Rivers, 
and  then  come  upon  two  and  a  half  miles  of 
solid,  restful  lake,  with  a  cool  wind  blowing  off 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  73 

it  and  little  waves  spitting  against  the  piers  of  a 
veritable,  albeit  hideously  ugly,  boat  house.  On 
the  faith  of  an  exile  from  the  Sea,  you  will  not 
stay  long  among  Palaces,  be  they  never  so 
lovely,  or  in  little  rooms  panelled  with  Dutch 
tiles,  be  these  never  so  rare  and  curious.  And 
here  follows  a  digression.  There  is  no  life  so 
good  as  the  life  of  a  loafer  who  travels  by  rail 
and  road ;  for  all  things  and  all  people  are  kind 
to  him.  From  the  chill  miseries  of  a  dak-bung- 
alow where  they  slew  one  hen  with  as  much 
parade  as  the  French  guillotined  Pranzini,  to 
the  well-ordered  sumptuousness  of  the  Resi- 
dency, was  a  step  bridged  over  by  kindly  and 
unquestioning  hospitality.  So  it  happened  that 
the  Englishman  was  not  only  able  to  go  upon 
the  lake  in  a  soft-cushioned  boat,  with  every- 
thing handsome  about  him,  but  might,  had  he 
chosen,  have  killed  wild-duck  with  which  the 
lake  swarms. 

The  mutter  of  water  under  a  boat's  nose  was 
a  pleasant  thing  to  hear  once  more.  Starting  at 
the  head  of  the  lake,  he  found  himself  shut  out 
from  sight  of  the  main  sheet  of  water  in  a  loch 
bounded  by  a  sunk,  broken  bund  to  steer  across 
which  was  a  matter  of  some  nicety.  Beyond 
that  lay  a  second  pool  spanned  by  a  narrow- 
arched  bridge  built,  men  said,  long  before  the 


74 

City  of  the  Rising  Sun,  which  is  little  more 
than  three  hundred  years  old.  The  bridge  con- 
nects the  City  with  Brahmaputra — a  white- 
walled  enclosure  filled  with  many  Brahmins 
and  ringing  with  the  noise  of  their  conches. 
Beyond  the  bridge,  the  body  of  the  lake,  with 
the  City  running  down  to  it,  comes  into  full 
view ;  and  Providence  has  arranged  for  the 
benefit  of  such  as  delight  in  colours",  that  the 
Rajputni  shall  wear  the  most  striking  tints  that 
she  can  buy  in  the  bazaars,  in  order  that  she 
may  beautify  the  ghats  where  she  comes  to 
bathe. 

The  bathing-ledge  at  the  foot  of  the  City 
wall  was  lighted  with  women  clad  in  raw  ver- 
milion, dull  red,  indigo  and  sky-blue,  saffron 
and  pink  and  turquoise;  the  water  faithfully 
doubling  everything.  But  the  first  impression 
was  of  the  unreality  of  the  sight,  for  the  Eng- 
lishman found  himself  thinking  of  the  Simla 
Fine  Arts  Exhibition  and  the  overdaring  am- 
ateurs who  had  striven  to  reproduce  scenes  such 
as  these.  Then  a  woman  rose  up,  and  clasping 
her  hands  behind  her  head,  looked  at  the  pass- 
ing boat,  and  the  ripples  spread  out  from  her 
waist,  in  blinding  white  silver,  far  across  the 
water.  As  a  picture,  a  daringly  insolent  picture, 
it  would  have  been  superb. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  75 

The  boat  turned  aside  to  shores  where  huge 
turtles  were  lying,  and  a  stork  had  built  her  a 
nest,  big  as  a  hay-cock,  in  a  withered  tree,  and 
a  bevy  of  coots  were  flapping  and  gabbling  in 
the  weeds  or  between  great  leaves  of  the  Vic- 
toria Regia — an  "escape"  from  the  Durbar 
Gardens.  Here  were,  as  Mandeville  hath  it,  "all 
manner  of  strange  fowle" — divers  and  waders, 
after  their  kind,  kingfishers  and  snaky-necked 
birds  of  the  cormorant  family,  but  no  duck. 
They  had  seen  the  guns  in  the  boat  and  were 
flying  to  and  fro  in  companies  across  the  lake, 
or  settling,  wise  birds,  in  the  glare  of  the  sun 
on  the  water.  The  lake  was  swarming  with 
them,  but  they  seemed  to  know  exactly  how  far 
a  twelve-bore  would  carry.  Perhaps  their 
knowledge  had  been  gained  from  the  English- 
man at  the  Residency.  Later,  as  the  sun  left  the 
lake  and  the  hills  began  to  glow  like  opals,  the 
boat  made  her  way  to  the  shallow  side  of  the 
lake,  through  fields  of  watergrass  and  dead  lo- 
tus-raffle that  rose  as  high  as  the  bows,  and 
clung  lovingly  about  the  rudder,  and  parted 
with  the  noise  of  silk  when  it  is  torn.  There  she 
waited  for  the  fall  of  twilight  when  the  duck 
would  come  home  to  bed,  and  the  Englishman 
sprawled  upon  the  cushions  in  deep  content  and 
laziness,  as  he  looked  across  to  where  two 


76 

marble  Palaces  floated  upon  the  waters,  and 
saw  all  the  glory  and  beauty  of  the  City,  and 
wondered  whether  Tod,  in  cocked  hat  and  stiff 
stock,  had  ever  come  shooting  among  the  reeds, 
and,  if  so,  how  in  the  world  he  had  ever  man- 
aged to  bowl  over. 

"Duck  and  drake,  by  Jove !  Confiding  beasts, 
weren't  they?  Hi!  Lalla,  jump  out  and  get 
them!"  It  was  a  brutal  thing,  this  double- 
barrelled  murder  perpetrated  in  the  silence  of 
the  marsh  when  the  kingly  wild-duck  came 
back  from  his  wanderings  with  his  mate  at  his 
side,  but — but — the  birds  were  very  good  to 
eat.  After  this  and  many  other  slaughters  had 
been  accomplished,  the  boat  went  back  in  the 
ful!  dusk,  down  narrow  water-lanes  and  across 
belts  of  weed,  disturbing  innumerable  fowl  on 
the  road,  till  she  reached  open  water  and  "the 
moon  like  a  rick  afire  was  rising  over  the  dale," 
and — it  was  not  the  "whit,  whit,  whit"  of  the 
nightingale  but  the  stately  "honk,  honk"  of 
some  wild  geese,  thanking  their  stars  that  these 
pestilent  shikaris  were  going  away. 

If  the  Venetian  owned  the  Pichola  Sagar  he 
might  say  with  justice : — "See  it  and  die."  But 
it  is  better  to  live  and  go  to  dinner,  and  strike 
into  a  new  life — that  of  the  men  who  bear  the 
hat-mark  on  their  brow  as  plainly  as  the  well- 
born native  carries  the  trisul  of  Shiva. 


77 

They  are  of  the  same  caste  as  the  toilers  on 
the  Frontier — tough,  bronzed  men,  with  wrin- 
kles at  the  corners  of  the  eyes,  gotten  by  look- 
ing across  much  sun-glare.  When  they  would 
speak  of  horses  they  mention  Arab  ponies,  and 
their  talk,  for  the  most  part,  drifts  Bombay- 
wards,  or  to  Abu,  which  is  their  Simla.  By 
these  things  the  traveller  may  see  that  he  is  far 
away  from  the  Presidency;  and  will  presently 
learn  that  he  is  in  a  land  where  the  railway  is 
an  incident  and  not  an  indispensable  luxury. 
Folk  tell  strange  stories  of  drives  in  bullock- 
carts  in  the  rains,  of  break-downs  in  nullahs 
fifty  miles  from  everywhere,  and  of  elephants 
that  used  to  sink  "for  rest  and  refreshment" 
half-way  across  swollen  streams.  Every  place 
here  seems  fifty  miles  from  everywhere,  and  the 
"legs  of  a  horse"  are  regarded  as  the  only  na- 
tural means  of  locomotion.  Also,  and  this  to 
the  Indian  Cockney  who  is  accustomed  to  the 
bleached  or  office  man  is  curious,  there  are  to 
be  found  many  veritable  "tiger  men" — not 
story-spinners  but  such  as  have,  in  their  wand- 
erings from  Bikaneer  to  Indore,  dropped  their 
tiger  in  the  way  of  business.  They  are  enthus- 
iastic over  princelings  of  little  known  fiefs, 
lords  of  austere  estates  perched  on  the  tops  of 
unthrifty  hills,  hard  riders  and  good  sportsmen. 


78 

And  five,  six,  yes  fully  nine  hundred  miles  to 
the  northward,  lives  the  sister  branch  of  the 
same  caste — the  men  who  swear  by  Pathan, 
Biluch  and  Brahui,  with  whom  they  have  shot 
or  broken  bread. 

There  is  a  saying  in  Upper  India  that  the 
more  desolate  the  country  the  greater  the  cer- 
tainty of  finding  a  Padre-Sahib.  The  proverb 
seems  to  hold  good  in  Udaipur,  where  the 
Scotch  Presbyterian  Mission  have  a  post,  and 
others  at  Todgarh  to  the  north  and  elsewhere. 
To  arrive,  under  Providence,  at  the  cure  of 
souls  through  the  curing  of  bodies  certainly 
seems  the  most  rational  method  of  conversion ; 
and  this  is  exactly  what  the  Missions  are  do- 
ing. Their  Padre  in  Udaipur  is  also  an  M.  D., 
and  of  him  a  rather  striking  tale  is  told.  Con- 
ceiving that  the  City  could  bear  another  hospi- 
tal in  addition  to  the  State  one,  he  took  fur- 
lough, went  home,  and  there,  by  crusade  and 
preaching,  raised  sufficient  money  for  the 
scheme,  so  that  none  might  say  that  he  was  be- 
holden to  the  State.  Returning,  he  built  his 
hospital,  a  very  model  of  neatness  and  comfort 
and,  opening  the  operation-book,  announced  his 
readiness  to  see  any  one  and  every  one  who 
was  sick.  How  the  call  was  and  is  now  re- 
sponded to,  the  dry  records  of  that  book  will 


79 

show ;  and  the  name  of  the  Padre-Sahib  is  hon- 
oured, as  these  ears  have  heard,  throughout 
Udaipur  and  far  around.  The  faith  that  sends 
a  man  into  the  wilderness,  and  the  secular  en- 
ergy which  enables  him  to  cope  with  an  ever- 
growing demand  for  medical  aid,  must,  in  time, 
find  their  reward.  If  patience  and  unwearying 
self-sacrifice  carry  any  merit,  they  should  do  so 
soon.  To-day  the  people  are  willing  enough  to 
be  healed,  and  the  general  influence  of  the 
Padre-Sahib  is  very  great.  But  beyond  that. . . 
Still  it  was  impossible  to  judge  aright. 


VIII. 


Divers  Passages  of  Speech  and  Action  whence 
the  Nature,  Arts  and  Disposition  of  the  King 
and  his  Subjects  may  be  observed. 

TN  this  land  men  tell  "sad  stories  of  the 
•*•  death  of  Kings,"  not  easily  found  else- 
where; and  also  speak  of  sati,  which  is  general- 
ly supposed  to  be  an  "effete  curiosity"  as  the 
Bengali  said,  in  a  manner  which  makes  it  seem 
very  near  and  vivid.  Be  pleased  to  listen  to 
some  of  the  tales,  but  with  all  the  names  cut 
out,  because  a  King  has  just  as  much  right  to 
have  his  family  affairs  respected  as  has  a  Brit- 
ish householder  paying  income-tax. 

Once  upon  a  time,  that  is  to  say  when  the 
British  power  was  well  established  in  the  land 
and  there  were  railways,  there  was  a  King  who 
lay  dying  for  many  days,  and  all,  including  the 
Englishmen  about  him,  knew  that  his  end  was 
certain.  But  he  had  chosen  to  lie  in  an  outer 
court  or  pleasure-house  of  his  Palace ;  and  with 
him  were  some  twenty  of  his  favorite  wives. 
The  place  in  which  he  lay  was  very  near  to  the 
City ;  and  there  was  a  fear  that  his  womenkind 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  81 

should,  on  his  death,  going  mad  with  grief,  cast 
off  their  veils  and  run  out  into  the  streets,  un- 
covered before  all  men.  In  which  case,  noth- 
ing, not  even  the  power  of  the  Press,  and  the 
locomotive,  and  the  telegraph,  and  cheap  educa- 
tion and  enlightened  municipal  councils,  could 
have  saved  them  from  sati,  for  they  were  the 
wives  of  a  King.  So  the  Political  did  his  best 
to  induce  the  dying  man  to  go  to  the  Fort  of 
the  City,  a  safe  place  close  to  the  regular  zena- 
na, where  all  the  women  could  be  kept  within 
walls.  He  said  that  the  air  was  better  in  the 
Fort,  but  the  King  refused ;  and  that  he  would 
recover  in  the  Fort,  but  the  King  refused.  Af- 
ter some  days,  the  latter  turned  and  said: — 
"Why  are  you  so  keen,  Sahib,  upon  getting  my 
old  bones  up  to  the  Fort  ?"  Driven  to  his  last 
defences,  the  Political  said  simply: — "Well, 
Maharana  Sahib,  the  place  is  close  to  the  road 
you  see,  and . . . . "  The  King  saw  and  said : — 
"Oh,  that's  it !  I've  been  puzzling  my  brain  for 
four  days  to  find  out  what  on  earth  you  were 
driving  at.  I'll  go  to-night."  "But  there  may 
be  some  difficulty,"  began  the  Political.  "You 
think  so,"  said  the  King.  "If  I  only  hold  up 
my  little  finger,  the  women  will  obey  me.  Go 
now,  and  come  back  in  five  minutes,  and  all  will 
be  ready  for  departure."  As  a  matter  of  fact, 


82  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

the  Political  withdrew  for  the  space  of  fifteen 
minutes,  and  gave  orders  that  the  conveyances 
which  he  had  kept  in  readiness  day  and  night 
should  be  got  ready.  In  fifteen  minutes  those 
twenty  women,  with  their  hand-maidens,  were 
packed  and  ready  for  departure;  and  the  King 
died  later  at  the  Fort,  and  nothing  happened. 
Here  the  Englishman  asked  why  a  frantic  wo- 
man must  of  necessity  become  sati  and  felt 
properly  abashed  when  he  was  told  that  she 
must.  There  was  nothing  else  for  her  if  she 
went  out  unveiled  deliberately. 

The  rush-out  forces  the  matter.  And,  indeed, 
if  you  consider  the  matter  from  a  Rajput  point 
of  view,  it  does. 

Then  followed  a  very  grim  tale  of  the  death 
of  another  King;  of  the  long  vigil  by  his  bed- 
side, before  he  was  taken  off  the  bed  to  die  upon 
the  ground;  of  the  shutting  of  a  certain  mys- 
terious door  behind  the  bed-head,  which  shut- 
ting was  followed  by  a  rustle  of  women's  dress ; 
of  a  walk  on  the  top  of  the  Palace,  to  escape  the 
heated  air  of  the  sick  room;  and  then,  in  the 
grey  dawn,  the  wail  upon  wail  breaking  from 
the  zenana  as  the  news  of  the  King's  death 
went  in.  "I  never  wish  to  hear  anything  more 
horrible  and  awful  in  my  life.  You  could  see 
nothing.  You  could  only  hear  the  poor 
wretches!"  said  the  Political  with  a  shiver. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  83 

The  last  resting-place  of  the  Maharanas  of 
Udaipur  is  at  Ahar,  a  little  village  two  miles 
east  of  the  City.  Here  they  go  down  in  their 
robes  of  State,  their  horse  following  behind, 
and  here  the  Political  saw,  after  the  death  of  a 
Maharana,  the  dancing-girls  dancing  before  the 
poor  white  ashes,  the  musicians  playing  among 
the  cenotaphs,  and  the  golden  hookah,  sword 
and  water-vessel  laid  out  for  the  naked  soul 
doomed  to  hover  twelve  days  round  the  funeral 
pyre,  before  it  could  depart  on  its  journey  to- 
wards a  fresh  birth  in  the  endless  circle  of  the 
Wheel  of  Fate.  Once,  in  a  neighboring  State  it 
is  said,  one  of  the  dancing-girls  stole  a  march  in 
the  next  world's  precedence  and  her  lord's  af- 
fections, upon  the  legitimate  queens.  The  af- 
fair happened,  by  the  way,  after  the  Mutiny, 
and  was  accomplished  with  great  pomp  in  the 
light  of  day.  Subsequently  those  who  might 
have  stopped  it  but  did  not  were  severely  pun- 
ished. The  girl  said  that  she  had  no  one  to 
look  to  but  the  dead  man,  and  followed  him,  to 
use  Tod's  formula,  "through  the  flames."  It 
would  be  curious  to  know  what  is  done  now 
and  again  among  these  lonely  hills  in  the 
walled  holds  of  the  Thakurs. 

But  to  return  from  the  burning-ground  to 
modern  Udaipur,  as  at  present  worked  under 


84  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

the  Maharana  and  his  Prime  Minister  Rae 
Punna  Lai,  C.  I.  E.  To  begin  with,  His  High- 
ness is  a  racial  anomaly  in  that,  judged  by  the 
strictest  European  standard,  he  is  a  man  of 
temperate  life,  the  husband  of  one  wife  whom 
he  married  before  he  was  chosen  to  the  throne 
after  the  death  of  the  Maharana  Sujjun  Singh 
in  1884.  Sujjun  Singh  died  childless  and  gave 
no  hint  of  his  desires  as  to  succession  and — 
omitting  all  the  genealogical  and  political  rea- 
sons which  would  drive  a  man  mad — Futteh 
Singh  was  chosen,  by  the  Thakurs,  from  the 
Seorati  Branch  of  the  family  which  Sangram 
Singh  II.  founded.  He  is  thus  a  younger  son 
of  a  younger  branch  of  a  younger  family, 
which  lucid  statement  should  suffice  to  explain 
everything.  The  man  who  could  deliberately 
unravel  the  succession  of  any  one  of  the  Rajput 
States  would  be  perfectly  capable  of  clearing 
the  politics  of  all  the  Frontier  tribes  from 
Jumrood  to  Quetta. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  Maharana  and  the 
Prime  Minister — in  whose  family  the  office 
has  been  hereditary  for  many  generations — 
divide  the  power  of  the  State.  They  control, 
more  or  less,  the  Mahand  Raj  Sabha  or  Coun- 
cil of  Direction  and  Revision.  This  is  com- 
posed of  many  of  the  Rawats  and  Thakurs  of 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  85 

the  State,  and  the  Poet  Laureate  who,  under  a 
less  genial  administration,  would  be  presuma- 
bly the  Registrar.  There  are  also  District  Of- 
ficers, Officers  of  Customs,  Superintendents  of 
the  Mint,  Master  of  the  Horses,  and  Supervisor 
of  Doles,  which  last  is  pretty  and  touching. 
The  State  officers  itself,  and  the  Englishman's 
investigations  failed  to  unearth  any  Bengalis. 
The  Commandant  of  the  State  Army,  about 
five  thousand  men  of  all  arms,  is  a  retired  non- 
commissioned officer,  a  Mr.  Lonergan ;  who,  as 
the  medals  on  his  breast  attest,  has  "done  the 
State  some  service,"  and  now  in  his  old  age  re- 
joices in  the  rank  of  Major-General,  and 
teaches  the  Maharana's  guns  to  make  uncom- 
monly good  practice.  The  Infantry  are  smart 
and  well  set  up,  while  the  Cavalry — rare  thing 
in  Native  States — have  a  distinct  notion  of 
keeping  their  accoutrements  clean.  They  are, 
further,  well  mounted  on  light  wiry  Mewar  and 
Kathiawar  horses.  Incidentally,  it  may  be  men- 
tioned that  the  Pathan  comes  down  with  his 
pickings  from  the  Punjab  to  Udaipur,  and  finds 
a  market  there  for  animals  that  were  much  bet- 
ter employed  in — but  the  complaint  is  a  stale 
one.  Let  us  see,  later  on,  what  the  Jodhpur 
stables  hold ;  and  then  formulate  an  indictment 
against  the  Government.  So  much  for  the  in- 


86  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

digenous  administration  of  Udaipur.  The  one 
drawback  in  the  present  Maharana,  from  the 
official  point  of  view,  is  his  want  of  education. 
He  is  a  thoroughly  good  man,  but  was  not 
brought  up  with  a  seat  on  the  guddce  before 
his  eyes,  consequently  he  is  not  an  English- 
speaking  man. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  him,  which  is  worth 
the  repeating.  An  Englishman  who  flattered 
himself  that  he  could  speak  the  vernacular  fair- 
ly well,  paid  him  a  visit  and  discoursed  with  a 
round  mouth.  The  Maharana  heard  him  polite- 
ly, and  turning  to  a  satellite,  demanded  a  trans- 
lation ;  which  was  given.  Then  said  the  Maha- 
rana : — "Speak  to  him  in  Angrezi."  The  An- 
grezi  spoken  by  the  interpreter  was  the  vernac- 
ular as  the  Sahibs  speak  it,  and  the  English- 
man, having  ended  his  conference,  departed 
abashed.  But  this  backwardness  is  eminently 
suited  to  a  place  like  Udaipur,  and  a  "var- 
nished" prince  is  not  always  a  desirable  thing. 
The  curious  and  even  startling  simplicity  of  his 
life  is  worth  preserving.  Here  is  a  specimen  of 
one  of  his  days.  Rising  at  four — and  the  dawn 
can  be  bitterly  chill — he  bathes  and  prays  after 
the  custom  of  his  race,  and  at  six  is  ready  to 
take  in  hand  the  first  instalment  of  the  day's 
work  which  comes  before  him  through  his 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  87 

Prime  Minister,  and  occupies  him  for  three  or 
four  hours  till  the  first  meal  of  the  day  is 
ready.  At  two  o'clock  he  attends  the  Mahand 
Raj  Sabha,  and  works  till  five,  retiring  at  a 
healthily  primitive  hour.  He  is  said  to  have  his 
hand  fairly  firmly  upon  the  reins  of  rule,  and 
to  know  as  much  as  most  monarchs  know  of 
the  way  in  which  the  revenues — about  thirty 
lakhs — are  disposed  of.  The  Prime  Minister's 
career  has  been  a  chequered  and  interesting 
one,  including,  inter  alia,  a  dismissal  from 
power  (this  was  worked  from  behind  the 
screen),  and  arrest  and  an  attack  with  words 
which  all  but  ended  in  his  murder.  He  has  not 
so  much  power  as  his  predecessors  had,  for  the 
reason  that  the  present  Maharaja  allows  little 
but  tiger-shooting  to  distract  him  from  the 
supervision  of  the  State.  His  Highness,  by  the 
way,  is  a  first-class  shot,  and  has  bagged  eigh- 
teen tigers  already.  He  preserves  his  game 
carefully,  and  permission  to  kill  tigers  is  not 
readily  obtainable. 

A  curious  instance  of  the  old  order  giving 
place  to  the  new  is  in  process  of  evolution  and 
deserves  notice.  The  Prime  Minister's  son, 
Futteh  Lai,  a  boy  of  twenty  years  old,  has  been 
educated  at  the  Mayo  College,  Ajmir,  and 
speaks  and  writes  English.  There  are  few  na- 


88  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

tive  officials  in  the  State  who  do  this;  and  the 
consequence  is  that  the  lad  has  won  a  very  fair 
insight  into  State  affairs,  and  knows  generally 
what  is  going  forward  both  in  the  Eastern  and 
Western  spheres  of  the  little  Court.  In  time  he 
may  qualify  for  direct  administrative  powers, 
and  Udaipur  will  be  added  to  the  list  of  the 
States  that  are  governed  "English  fash"  as  the 
irreverent  Americans  put  it.  What  the  end 
will  be,  after  three  generations  of  Princes  and 
Dewans  have  been  put  through  the  mill  of  Raj- 
kumar  Colleges,  those  who  live  will  learn. 

More  interesting  is  the  question — For  how 
long  can  the  vitality  of  a  people  whose  life  was 
arms  be  suspended?  Men  in  the  North  say 
that,  by  the  favour  of  the  Government,  the 
Sikh  Sirdars  are  rotting  on  their  lands;  and 
the  Rajput  Thakurs  say  of  themselves  that  they 
are  growing  "rusty."  The  old,  old  problem 
forces  itself  on  the  most  unreflective  mind  at 
every  turn  in  the  gay  streets  of  Udaipur.  A 
Frenchman  might  write: — "Behold  there  the 
horse  of  the  Rajput — foaming,  panting,  cara- 
coling, but  always  fettered  with  his  head  so 
majestic  upon  his  bosom  so  amply  filled  with 
a  generous  heart.  He  rages,  but  he  does  not 
advance.  See  there  the  destiny  of  the  Rajput 
who  bestrides  him,  and  upon  whose  left  flank 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  89 

bounds  the  sabre  useless — the  haberdashery  of 
the  iron-monger  only.  Pity  the  horse  in  rea- 
son, for  that  life  there  is  his  raison  d'etre.  Pity 
ten  thousand  times  more  the  Rajput,  for  he 
has  no  raison  d'etre.  He  is  an  anachronism  in 
a  blue  turban." 

The  Gaul  might  be  wrong,  but  Tod  wrote 
things  which  seem  to  support  this  view,  in  the 
days  when  he  wished  to  make  "buffer-states" 
of  the  land  he  loved  so  well. 

Let  us  visit  the  Durbar  Gardens,  where  little 
naked  Cupids  are  trampling  upon  fountains  of 
fatted  fish,  all  in  bronze,  where  there  are  cy- 
presses and  red  paths,  and  a  deer-park  full  of 
all  varieties  of  deer,  besides  two  growling, 
fluffy  little  panther  cubs,  a  black  panther  who 
is  the  Prince  of  Darkness  and  a  gentleman, 
and  a  terrace-full  of  tigers,  bears,  and  Guzerat 
lions  bought  from  the  King  of  Oudh's  sale. 

On  the  best  site  in  the  Gardens  is  rising  the 
Victoria  Hall,  the  foundation-stone  of  which 
was  laid  by  the  Maharana  on  the  2ist  of  June 
last.  It  is  built  after  the  designs  of  Mr.  C. 
Thompson,  Executive  Engineer  of  the  State, 
and  will  be  in  the  Hindu-Saracenic  style;  hav- 
ing two  fronts,  west  and  north.  In  the  former 
will  be  the  principal  entrance,  approached  by 
a  flight  of  steps  leading  to  a  handsome  porch  of 


90  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

carved  pillars  supporting  stone  beams — the  flat 
Hindu  arch.  To  the  left  of  the  entrance  hall 
will  be  a  domed  octagonal  tower  eighty  feet 
high,  holding  the  principal  staircase  leading  to 
the  tipper  rooms.  A  corridor  on  the  right  of  the 
entrance  will  lead  to  the  museum,  and  immedi- 
ately behind  the  entrance  hall  is  the  reading- 
room,  42  by  24  feet,  and  beyond  it  the  library 
and  office.  To  the  right  of  the  reading-room 
will  be  an  open  courtyard  with  a  fountain  in 
the  centre,  and,  beyond  the  courtyard,  the 
museum — a  great  hall,  one  hundred  feet  long. 
Over  the  library  and  the  entrance  hall  will  be 
private  apartments  for  the  Maharana,  ap- 
proached by  a  private  staircase.  The  com- 
munication between  the  two  upper  rooms  will 
be  by  a  corridor  running  along  the  north  front 
having  a  parapet  of  delicately  cut  pillars  and 
cusped  arches — the  latter  filled  in  with  open 
tracery.  Pity  it  is  that  the  whole  of  this  will 
have  to  be  whitewashed  to  protect  the  stone 
from  the  weather.  Over  the  entrance-porch  and 
projecting  from  the  upper  room,  will  be  a  very 
elaborately  cut  balcony  supported  on  handsome 
brackets.  Facing  the  main  entrance  will  be  a 
marble  statue,  nine  feet  high,  of  the  Queen,  on 
a  white  marble  pedestal  ten  feet  high.  The 
statue  is  now  being  made  at  home  by  Mr.  Birch, 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  91 

R.  A.  The  cost  of  the  whole  will  be  about  Rs. 
80,000.  Now,  it  is  a  curious  thing  that  the 
statue  of  Her  Majesty  will  be  put  some  eighty 
feet  below  the  level  of  the  great  bund  that  holds 
in  the  Pichola  lake.  But  the  bund  is  a  firm  one 
and  has  stood  for  many  years. 

Another  public  building  deserves  notice,  and 
that  is  the  Walter  Hospital  for  native  women, 
the  foundation-stone  of  which  was  laid  by  the 
Countess  of  Dufferin  on  that  memorable  occa- 
sion when  the  Viceroy,  behind  Artillery 
Horses,  covered  the  seventy  miles  from  Chitor 
to  Udaipur  in  under  six  hours.  The  building, 
by  the  same  brain  that  designed  the  hall,  will 
be  ready  for  occupation  in  a  month.  It  is  in 
strict  keeping  with  the  canons  of  Hindu  archi- 
tecture externally,  and  has  a  high,  well-venti- 
lated waiting-room,  out  of  which,  to  the  right, 
are  two  wards  for  in-patients,  and  to  the  left  a 
dispensary  and  consulting-room.  Beyond  these, 
again,  is  a  third  ward  for  in-patients.  In  a 
courtyard  behind  are  a  ward  for  low  caste 
patients  and  the  offices. 

When  all  these  buildings  are  completed, 
Udaipur  will  be  dowered  with  three  good  hos- 
pitals, including  the  State's  and  the  Padre's, 
and  a  first  instalment  of  civilisation. 


IX. 


Of  the  Pig-drive  which  was  a  Panther-killing, 
and  of  the  Departure  to  Chitor. 

ABOVE  the  Durbar  Gardens  lie  low  hills,  in 
which  the  Maharana  keeps,  very  strictly 
guarded,  his  pig  and  his  deer,  and  anything  else 
that  may  find  shelter  in  the  low  scrub  or  under 
the  scattered  boulders.  These  preserves  are 
scientifically  parcelled  out  with  high  red-stone 
walls;  and,  here  and  there,  are  dotted  tiny 
shooting-boxes,  in  the  first  sense  of  the  term — 
masonry  sentry-boxes,  in  which  five  or  six  men 
may  sit  at  ease  and  shoot.  It  has  been  ar- 
ranged— to  entertain  the  Englishmen  who  were 
gathered  at  the  Residency  to  witness  the  in- 
vestiture of  the  King  with  the  G.  C.  S.  I. — 
that  there  should  be  a  little  pig-drive  in  front  of 
the  Kala  Odey  or  black  shooting-box.  The 
Rajput  is  a  man  and  a  brother,  in  respect  that 
he  will  ride,  shoot,  eat  pig  and  drink  strong 
waters  like  an  Englishman.  Of  the  pig-hunt- 
ing he  makes  almost  a  religious  duty,  and  of 
the  wine-drinking  no  less.  Read  how  des- 
perately they  used  to  ride  in  Udaipur  at  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  93 

beginning  of  the  century  when  Tod,  always  in 
his  cocked  hat  be  sure,  counted  up  the  tale  of 
accidents  at  the  end  of  the  day's  sport. 

There  is  something  unfair  in  shooting  pig; 
but  each  man  who  went  out  consoled  himself 
with  the  thought  that  it  was  utterly  impossible 
to  ride  the  brutes  up  the  almost  perpendicular 
hill-side,  or  down  the  rocky  ravines,  and  that 
he  individually  would  only  go  "just  for  the 
fun  of  the  thing."  Those  who  stayed  behind 
made  rude  remarks  on  the  subject  of  "pork 
butchers,"  and  the  dangers  that  attend  shooting 
from  a  balcony.  These  were  treated  with  the 
contempt  they  merited.  There  are  ways  and 
ways  of  slaying  pig — from  the  orthodox 
method  which  begins  with  "The  Boar — The 
Boar — The  Mighty  Boar!"  overnight,  and  ends 
with  a  shaky  bridle  hand  next  morn,  to  the 
sober  and  solitary  pot-shot,  at  dawn,  from  a 
railway  embankment  running  through  river 
marsh ;  but  the  perfect  way  is  this.  Get  a  large 
four-horse  break,  and  drive  till  you  meet  an 
unlimited  quantity  of  pad-elephants  waiting  at 
the  foot  of  rich  hill-preserves.  Mount  slowly 
and  with  dignity,  and  go  in  swinging  proces- 
sion, by  the  marble-faced  border  of  one  of  the 
most  lovely  lakes  on  earth.  Strike  off  on  a  semi- 
road,  semi-hill-torrent  path  through  unthrifty 


94  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

thorny  jungle,  and  so  climb  up  and  up  and  up, 
till  you  see,  spread  like  a  map  below,  the  lake 
and  the  Palace  and  the  City,  hemmed  in  by  the 
sea  of  hills  that  lies  between  Udaipur  and 
Mount  Abu  a  hundred  miles  away.  Then  take 
your  seat  in  a  comfortable  chair,  in  a  pukka, 
two-storeyed  Grand  Stand,  with  an  awning 
spread  atop  to  keep  off  the  sun,  while  the  Rawat 
of  Amet  and  the  Prime  Minister's  heir — no 
less — invite  you  to  take  your  choice  of  the 
many  rifles  spread  on  a  ledge  at  the  front  of 
the  building.  This,  gentlemen  who  screw  your 
pet  ponies  at  early  dawn  after  the  sounder  that 
vanishes  into  cover  soon  as  sighted,  or  pain- 
fully follow  the  tiger  through  the  burning  heats 
of  Mewar  in  May,  this  is  shooting  after  the 
fashion  of  Ouida — in  musk  and  ambergris  and 
patchouli. 

It  is  demoralising.  One  of  the  best  and 
hardest  riders  of  the  Lahore  Tent  Club  in  the 
old  days,  as  the  boars  of  Bouli  Lena  Singh 
knew  well,  said  openly : — "This  is  a  first-class 
bundobust,"  and  fell  to  testing  his  triggers  as 
though  he  had  been  a  pot-hunter  from  his 
birth.  Derision  and  threats  of  exposure  moved 
him  not.  "Give  me  an  arm-chair!"  said  he. 
"This  is  the  proper  way  to  deal  with  pig!" 
And  he  put  up  his  feet  on  the  ledge  and 
stretched  himself. 


95 

There  were  many  weapons  to  have  choice 
among — from  the  double-barrelled  .500  Ex- 
press, whose  bullet  is  a  tearing,  rending  shell, 
to  the  Rawat  of  Amet's  regulation  military 
Martini-Henry.  A  profane  public  at  the  Resi- 
dency had  suggested  clubs  and  saws  as  amply 
sufficient  for  the  work  in  hand.  Herein  they 
were  moved  by  envy,  which  passion  was  ten- 
fold increased  when — but  this  comes  later  on. 
The  beat  was  along  a  deep  gorge  in  the  hills, 
flanked  on  either  crest  by  stone  walls,  manned 
with  beaters.  Immediately  opposite  the  shoot- 
ing-box, the  wall  on  the  upper  or  higher  hill 
made  a  sharp  turn  downhill,  contracting  the 
space  through  which  the  pig  would  have  to  pass 
to  a  gut  which  was  variously  said  to  be  from 
one  hundred  and  fifty  to  four  hundred  yards 
across.  Most  of  the  shooting  was  up  or  down- 
hill. 

A  philanthropic  desire  not  to  murder  more 
Bhils  than  were  absolutely  necessary  to  main- 
tain a  healthy  current  of  human  life  in  the 
Hilly  Tracts,  coupled  with  a  well-founded 
dread  of  the  hinder,  or  horse,  end  of  a  double- 
barrelled  .500  Express  which  would  be  sure  to 
go  off  both  barrels  together,  led  the  English- 
man to  take  a  gunless  seat  in  the  background; 
while  a  silence  fell  upon  the  party,  and  very 


96  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

far  away  up  the  gorge  the  heated  afternoon 
air  was  cut  by  the  shrill  tremolo  squeal  of  the 
Bhil  beaters.  Now  a  man  may  be  in  no  sort  or 
fashion  a  shikari — may  hold  Budhistic  objec- 
tions to  the  slaughter  of  living  things — but 
there  is  something  in  the  extraordinary  noise 
of  an  agitated  Bhil,  which  makes  even  the  most 
peaceful  of  mortals  get  up  and  yearn,  like  Tar- 
tarin  of  Tarescon  for  "lions" — always  at  a 
safe  distance  be  it  understood.  As  the  beat 
drew  nearer,  under  the  squealing — the  "ul-al- 
lu-lu-lu" — was  heard  a  long-drawn  bittern-like 
boom  of  "So-oor!"  "So-oor!"  and  the  crashing 
of  boulders.  The  guns  rose  in  their  places, 
forgetting  that  each  and  all  had  merely  come 
"to  see  the  fun,"  and  began  to  fumble  among 
the  little  mounds  of  cartridges  under  the  chairs. 
Presently,  tripping  delicately  among  the  rocks, 
a  pig  stepped  out  of  a  cactus-bush,  and — the 
fusillade  began.  The  dust  flew  and  the 
branches  chipped,  but  the  pig  went  on — a  blue- 
grey  shadow  almost  undistinguishable  against 
the  rocks,  and  took  no  harm.  "Sighting 
shots,"  said  the  guns  sulkily;  and  the  company 
mourned  that  the  brute  had  got  away.  The 
beat  came  nearer,  and  then  the  listener  discov- 
ered what  the  bubbling  scream  was  like :  for  he 
forgot  straightway  about  the  beat  and  went 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  97 

back  to  the  dusk  of  an  Easter  Monday  in  the 
gardens  of  the  Crystal  Palace,  before  the  bom- 
bardment of  Kars,  "set  piece  ten  thousand  feet 
square,"  had  been  illuminated,  and  about  five 
hundred  'Arries  were  tickling  a  thousand 
'Arriets.  Their  giggling  and  nothing  else  was 
the  noise  of  the  Bhil.  So  curiously  do  Syden- 
ham  and  Western  Rajputana  meet.  Then 
came  another  pig,  who  was  smitten  to  the  death 
and  rolled  down  among  the  bushes,  drawing 
his  last  breath  in  a  human  and  horrible  manner. 
But  full  on  the  crest  of  the  hill,  blown  along 
— there  is  no  other  word  to  describe  it — like  a 
ball  of  thistle-down,  passed  a  brown  shadow, 
and  men  cried: — "Bagheera!"  or  "Panther!" 
according  to  their  nationalities,  and  blazed. 
The  shadow  leaped  the  wall  that  had  turned  the 
pig  downhill,  and  vanished  among  the  cactus. 
"Never  mind,"  said  the  Prime  Minister's  son 
consolingly,  "we'll  beat  the  other  side  of  the  hill 
afterwards  and  get  him  yet."  "Oh!  he's  a  mile 
off  by  this  time,"  said  the  guns;  but  the  Rawat 
of  Amet,  a  magnificently  handsome  young 
man,  smiled  a  sweet  smile  and  said  nothing. 
More  pig  passed  and  were  slain,  and  many 
more  broke  back  through  the  beaters  who  pres- 
ently came  through  the  cover  in  scores.  They 
were  in  russet  green  and  red  uniform,  each 


98  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

man  bearing  a  long  spear,  and  the  hillside  was 
turned  on  the  instant  to  a  camp  of  Robin 
Hood's  foresters.  Then  they  brought  up  the 
dead  from  behind  bushes  and  under  rocks — 
among  others  a  twenty-seven-inch  brute  who 
bore  on  his  flank  (all  pigs  shot  in  a  beat  are 
ex-officio  boars)  a  hideous,  half -healed  scar, 
big  as  a  man's  hand,  of  a  bullet  wound.  Ex- 
press bullets  are  ghastly  things  in  their  effects, 
for,  as  the  shikari  is  never  tired  of  demonstrat- 
ing, they  knock  the  inside  of  animals  into  pulp. 
The  second  beat,  of  the  reverse  side  of  the 
hill,  had  barely  begun  when  the  panther  re- 
turned uneasily,  as  if  something  were  keeping 
her  back — much  lower  down  the  hill.  Then  the 
face  of  the  Rawat  of  Amet  changed,  as  he 
brought  his  gun  up  to  his  shoulder.  Looking 
at  him  as  he  fired,  one  forgot  all  about  the 
Mayo  College  at  which  he  had  been  educated, 
and  remembered  only  some  trivial  and  out-of- 
date  affairs,  in  which  his  forefathers  had  been 
concerned,  when  a  bridegroom,  with  his  bride 
at  his  side,  charged  down  the  slope  of  the 
Chitor  road  and  died  among  Akbar's  men. 
There  are  stories  connected  with  the  house  of 
Amet,  which  are  told  in  Mewar  to-day.  The 
young  man's  face,  for  as  short  a  time  as  it  takes 
to  pull  trigger  and  see  where  the  bullet  falls, 
was  a  light  upon  all  these  tales. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  99 

Then  the  mask  shut  down,  as  he  clicked  out 
the  cartridge  and,  very  sweetly,  gave  it  as  his 
opinion  that  some  other  gun,  and  not  his  own, 
had  bagged  the  panther,  who  lay  shot  through 
the  spine,  feebly  trying  to  drag  herself  down- 
hill into  cover.  It  is  an  awful  thing  to  see  a  big 
beast  die,  when  the  soul  is  wrenched  out  of  the 
struggling  body  in  ten  seconds.  Wild  horses 
shall  not  make  the  Englishman  disclose  the  ex- 
act number  of  shots  that  were  fired.  It  is 
enough  to  say  that  four  Englishmen,  now  scat- 
tered to  the  four  winds  of  heaven,  are  each 
morally  certain  that  he  and  he  alone  shot  that 
panther.  In  time,  when  distance  and  the  mir- 
age of  the  sands  of  Jodhpur  shall  have  softened 
the  harsh  outlines  of  truth,  the  Englishman 
who  did  not  fire  a  shot  will  come  to  believe  that 
he  was  the  real  slayer,  and  will  carefully  elab- 
orate that  lie. 

A  few  minutes  after  the  murder,  a  two-year 
old  cub  came  trotting  along  the  hill-side,  and 
was  bowled  over  by  a  very  pretty  shot  behind 
the  left  ear  and  through  the  palate.  Then  the 
beaters'  lances  showed  through  the  bushes,  and 
the  guns  began  to  realise  that  they  had  allowed 
to  escape,  or  had  driven  back  by  their  fire,  a 
multitude  of  pig. 

This  ended  the  beat,  and  the  procession  re- 


ioo  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

turned  to  the  Residency  to  heap  dead  panthers 
upon  those  who  had  called  them  "pork  butch- 
ers," and  to  stir  up  the  lake  of  envy  with  the 
torpedo  of  brilliant  description.  The  English- 
man's attempt  to  compare  the  fusillade  which 
greeted  the  panther  to  the  continuous  drum- 
ming of  a  ten-barrelled  Nordenfeldt  was,  how- 
ever, coldly  received.  So  harshly  is  truth 
treated  all  the  world  over. 

And  then,  after  a  little  time,  came  the  end, 
and  a  return  to  the  road  in  search  of  new  coun- 
tries. But  shortly  before  the  departure,  the 
Padre-Sahib,  who  knows  every  one  in  Udaipur, 
read  a  sermon  in  a  sentence.  The  Maharana's 
investiture,  which  has  already  been  described 
in  the  Indian  papers,  had  taken  place,  and  the 
carriages,  duly  escorted  by  the  Erinpura  Horse, 
were  returning  to  the  Residency.  In  a  niche  of 
waste  land,  under  the  shadow  of  the  main  gate, 
a  place  strewn  with  rubbish  and  shards  of  pot- 
tery, a  dilapidated  old  man  was  trying  to  con- 
trol his  horse  and  a  hookah  on  the  saddle-bow. 
The  blundering  garron  had  been  made  restive 
by  the  rush  past,  and  the  hookah  all  but  fell 
from  the  hampered  hands.  "See  that  man!" 

said  the  Padre  tersely.     "That's  Singh. 

He  intrigued  for  the  throne  not  so  very  long 
ago."  It  was  a  pitiful  little  picture,  and  needed 
no  further  comment. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  ion 

For  the  benefit  of  the  loafer  it  should  be 
noted  that  Udaipur  will  never  be  pleasant  or 
accessible  until  the  present  Mail   Contractors 
have  been  hanged.     They  are  extortionate  and 
untruthful,  and  their  one  set  of  harness  and  one 
tonga  are  as  rotten  as  pears.     However,  the 
weariness  of  the  flesh  must  be  great  indeed  to 
make  the  wanderer  blind  to  the  beauties  of  a 
journey  by  clear  starlight  and  in  biting  cold  to 
Chitor.     About  six  miles  from  Udaipur,  the 
granite  hills  close  in  upon  the  road,  and  the  air 
grows  warmer  until,  with  a  rush  and  a  rattle, 
the  tonga  swings  through  the  great  Dobarra, 
the  gate  in  the  double  circle  of  hills  round 
Udaipur  on  to  the  pastures  of  Mewar.     More 
than  once  the  Girwa  has  been  a  death-trap  to 
those  who  rashly  entered  it;  and  an  army  has 
been  cut  up  on  the  borders  of  the  Pichola  lake. 
Even  now  the  genius  of  the  place  is  strong  upon 
the  hills,  and  as  he  felt  the  cold  air  from  the 
open  ground  without  the  barrier,  the  English- 
man found  himself  repeating  the  words  of  one 
of  the  Hat-marked  Tribe  whose  destiny  kept 
him  within  the  Dobarra.     "You  must  have  a 
shouk  of  some  kind  in  these  parts  or  you'll 
die."  Very  lovely  in  Udaipur,  and  thrice  pleas- 
ant are  a  few  days  spent  within  her  gates,  but 
. . .  .read  what  Tod  said  who  stayed  two  years 


102  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

behind  the  Dobarra,  and  accepted  the  deserts  of 
Marwar  as  a  delightful  change. 

It  is  good  to  be  free,  a  wanderer  upon  the 
highways,  knowing  not  what  to-morrow  will 
bring  forth — whether  the  walled-in  niceties  of 
an  English  household,  rich  in  all  that  makes 
life  fair  and  desirable,  or  a  sleepless  night  in 
the  society  of  a  goods-czfw-booking-office-cttm- 
parcels-clerk,  on  fifteen  rupees  a  month,  who 
tells  in  stilted  English  the  story  of  his  official 
life,  while  the  telegraph  gibbers  like  a  maniac 
once  in  an  hour  and  then  is  dumb,  and  the 
pariah  dogs  fight  and  howl  over  the  cotton- 
bales  on  the  platform. 

Verily,  there  is  no  life  like  life  on  the  road — 
when  the  skies  are  cool  and  all  men  are  kind. 


X. 


A  little  of  the  History  of  Chitor,  and  the  Mal- 
practices of  a  She-elephant. 

THERE  is  a  certain  want  of  taste,  an  al- 
most actual  indecency,  in  seeing  the  sun 
rise  on  the  earth.  Until  the  heat-haze  begins 
and  the  distances  thicken,  Nature  is  so  very 
naked  that  the  Actaeon  who  has  surprised  her 
dressing,  blushes.  Sunrise  on  the  plains  of 
Mewar  is  an  especially  brutal  affair. 

The  moon  was  burnt  out  and  the  air  was  bit- 
terly cold,  when  the  Englishman  headed  due 
east  in  his  tonga,  and  the  patient  sowar  behind 
nodded  and  yawned  in  the  saddle.  There  was 
no  warning  of  the  day's  advent.  The  horses 
were  unharnessed,  at  one  halting-stage,  in  the 
thick,  soft  shadows  of  night,  and  ere  their  suc- 
cessors had  limped  under  the  bar,  a  raw  and 
cruel  light  was  upon  all  things  so  that  the  Eng- 
lishman could  see  every  rent  seam  in  the  rocks 
around — see  "even  to  the  uttermost  farthing." 
A  little  further,  and  he  came  upon  the  black 
bulk  of  Chitor  between  him  and  the  morning 
sun.  It  has  already  been  said  that  the  Fort  re- 


104  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

sembles  a  man-of-war.  Every  distant  view 
heightens  this  impression,  for  the  swell  of  the 
sides  follows  the  form  of  a  ship,  and  the  bas- 
tions on  the  south  wall  make  the  sponsions  in 
which  the  machine-guns  are  mounted.  From 
bow  to  stern,  the  thing  more  than  three  miles 
long,  is  between  three  and  five  hundred  feet 
high,  and  from  one-half  to  one-quarter  of  a 
mile  broad.  Have  patience,  now,  to  listen  to  a 
rough  history  of  Chitor. 

In  the  beginning,  no  one  knows  clearly  who 
scarped  the  hill-sides  of  the  hill  rising  out  of 
the  bare  plain,  and  made  of  it  a  place  of 
strength.  It  is  written  that,  eleven  and  a  half 
centuries  ago,  Bappa  Rawul,  the  demi-god 
whose  stature  was  twenty  cubits,  whose  loin- 
cloth was  five  hundred  feet  long,  and  whose 
spear  was  beyond  the  power  of  mortal  man  to 
lift,  took  Chitor  from  "Man  Singh,  the  Mori 
Prince,"  and  wrote  the  first  chapter  of  the  his- 
tory of  Mewar,  which  he  received  ready-made 
from  Man  Singh  who,  if  the  chronicles  speak 
sooth,  was  his  uncle.  Many  and  very  marvel- 
lous legends  cluster  round  the  name  of  Bappa 
Rawul;  and  he  is  said  to  have  ended  his  days, 
far  away  from  India,  in  Khorasan,  where  he 
married  an  unlimited  number  of  the  Daughters 
of  Heth,  and  was  the  father  of  all  the  Now- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  105 

shera  Pathans.  Some  who  have  wandered,  by 
the  sign-posts  of  inscription,  into  the  fogs  of 
old  time,  aver  that,  two  centuries  before  Bappa 
Rawul  took  Chitor,  the  Mori  Division  of  the 
Pramar  Rajputs,  who  are  the  ruling  family  of 
Mewar,  had  found  a  hold  in  Bhilwar,  and  for 
four  centuries  before  that  time  had  ruled  in 
Kathiawar;  and  had  royally  sacked  and  slain, 
and  been  sacked  and  slain  in  turn.  But  these 
things  are  for  the  curious  and  the  scholar,  and 
not  for  the  reader  who  reads  lightly.  Nine 
princes  succeeded  Bappa,  between  728  and 
1068  A.  D.,  and  among  these  was  one  Alluji, 
who  built  a  Jain  tower  upon  the  brow  of  the 
hill,  for  in  those  days,  though  the  Sun  was  wor- 
shipped, men  were  Jams. 

And  here  they  lived  and  sallied  into  the 
plains,  and  fought  and  increased  the  borders 
of  their  kingdom,  or  were  suddenly  and 
stealthily  murdered,  or  stood  shoulder  to 
shoulder  against  the  incursions  of  the  "Devil 
men"  from  the  north.  In  1 150  A.  D.  was  born 
Samar  Singh,  and  he  married  into  the  family 
of  Prithi  Raj,  the  last  Hindu  Emperor  of 
Delhi,  who  was  at  feud,  in  regard  to  a  succes- 
sion question,  with  the  Prince  of  Kanauj.  In 
the  war  that  followed,  Kanauj,  being  hard 
pressed  by  Prithi  Raj  and  Samar  Singh,  called 


io6  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

Shahabuddin  Ghori  to  his  aid.  At  first,  Samar 
Singh  and  Prithi  Raj  broke  the  army  of  the 
Northmen  somewhere  in  the  Lower  Punjab, 
but  two  years  later  Shahabuddin  came  again, 
and,  after  three  days'  fighting  on  the  banks  of 
the  Kaggar,  slew  Samar  Singh,  captured  and 
murdered  Prithi  Raj,  and  sacked  Delhi  and 
Amber  while  Samar  Singh's  favorite  queen 
became  sati  at  Chitor.  But  another  wife,  a 
princess  of  Patun,  kept  her  life,  and  when 
Shahabuddin  sent  down  Kutbuddin  to  waste 
her  lands,  led  the  Rajput  army,  in  person,  from 
Chitor,  and  defeated  Kutbuddin. 

Then  followed  confusion,  through  eleven 
turbulent  reigns,  that  the  annalist  has  failed  to 
unravel.  Once  in  the  years  between  1 193  and 
the  opening  of  the  fourteenth  century,  Chitor 
must  have  been  taken  by  the  Mussulman,  for  it 
is  written  that  one  prince  "recovered  Chitor 
and  made  the  name  of  Rana  to  be  recognized 
by  all."  Six  princes  were  slain  in  battles 
against  the  Mussulman,  in  vain  attempts  to 
clear  far  away  Gya  from  the  presence  of  the 
infidel. 

Then  Ala-ud-din  Khilji,  the  Pathan  Em- 
peror, swept  the  country  to  the  Dekkan.  In 
those  days,  and  these  things  are  confusedly  set 
down  as  having  happened  at  the  end  of  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  107 

thirteenth  century,  a  relative  of  Rana  Lakhs- 
man  Singh,  the  then  Rana  of  Chitor,  had 
married  a  Rajput  princess  of  Ceylon — Pud- 
mini,  "And  she  was  fairest  of  all  flesh  on 
earth."  Her  fame  was  sung  through  the  land 
by  the  poets,  and  she  became,  in  some  sort, 
the  Helen  of  Chitor.  Ala-ud-din  heard  of  her 
beauty  and  promptly  besieged  the  Fort.  When 
he  found  his  enterprise  too  difficult,  he  prayed 
that  he  might  be  permitted  to  see  Pudmini's 
face  in  a  mirror,  and  this  wish,  so  says  the  tale, 
was  granted.  Knowing  that  the  Rajput  was  a 
gentleman  he  entered  Chitor  almost  unarmed, 
saw  the  face  in  the  mirr  r,  and  was  well 
treated;  the  husband  of  the  fair  Pudmini  ac- 
companying him,  in  return,  to  the  camp  at  the 
foot  of  the  hill.  Like  Raja  Runjeet  in  the 
ballad  the  Rajput — 

" trusted  a  Mussulman's  word 

Wah  !  Wah  !  Trust  a  liar  to  lie ! 

Out  of  his  eyrie  they  tempted  my  bird, 

Fettered  his  wings  that  he  could  not  fly." 

Pudmini's  husband  was  caught,  and  Ala-ud-din 
demanded  Pudmini  as  the  price  of  his  return. 
The  Rajputs  here  showed  that  they  too  could 
scheme,  and  sent,  in  great  state,  Pudmini's  lit- 
ter to  the  besiegers'  entrenchments.  But  there 
was  no  Pudmini  in  the  litter,  and  the  following 


io8  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

of  handmaidens  was  a  band  of  seven  hundred 
armed  men.  Thus,  in  the  confusion  of  a  camp- 
fight,  Pudmini's  husband  was  rescued,  and  Ala- 
ud-din's  soldiery  followed  hard  on  his  heels  to 
the  gates  of  Chitor,  where  the  best  and  bravest 
on  the  rock  were  killed  before  Ala-ud-din  with- 
drew, only  to  return  soon  after  and,  with  a 
doubled  army,  besiege  in  earnest.  His  first  at- 
tack men  called  the  half-sack  of  Chitor,  for, 
though  he  failed  to  win  within  the  walls,  he 
killed  the  flower  of  the  Rajputs.  The  second 
attack  ended  in  the  first  sack  and  the  awful  sati 
of  the  women  on  the  rock. 

When  everything  was  hopeless  and  the  very 
terrible  Goddess,  who  lives  in  the  bowels  of 
Chitor,  had  spoken  and  claimed  for  death 
eleven  out  of  the  twelve  of  the  Rana's  sons,  all 
who  were  young  or  fair  women  betook  them- 
selves to  a  great  underground  chamber,  and  the 
fires  were  lit  and  the  entrance  was  walled  up 
and  they  died.  The  Rajputs  opened  the  gates 
and  fought  till  they  could  fight  no  more,  and 
Ala-ud-din  the  victorious  entered  a  wasted  and 
desolated  city.  He  wrecked  everything  except- 
ing only  the  palace  of  Pudmini  and  the  old  Jain 
tower  before  mentioned.  That  was  all  he  could 
do,  for  there  were  few  men  alive  of  the  defend- 
ers of  Chitor  when  the  day  was  won,  and  the 
women  were  ashes  in  the  underground  palace. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  109 

Ajai  Singh,  the  one  surviving  son  of  Lakhs- 
man  Singh,  had,  at  his  father's  insistence,  es- 
caped from  Chitor  to  "carry  on  the  line"  when 
better  days  should  come.  He  brought  up 
Hamir,  son  of  one  of  his  elder  brothers,  to  be  a 
thorn  in  the  side  of  the  invader,  and  Hamir 
overthrew  Maldeo,  chief  of  Jhalore  and  vassal 
of  Ala-ud-din,  into  whose  hands  Ala-ud-din 
had,  not  too  generously,  given  what  was  left  of 
Chitor.  So  the  Sesodias  came  to  their  own 
again,  and  the  successors  of  Hamir  extended 
their  kingdoms  and  rebuilt  Chitor,  as  kings 
know  how  to  rebuild  cities  in  a  land  where 
human  labour  and  life  are  cheaper  than  bread 
and  water.  For  two  centuries,  saith  Tod, 
Mewar  flourished  exceedingly  and  was  the 
paramount  kingdom  of  all  Rajasthan.  Great- 
est of  all  the  successors  of  Hamir,  was  Kumbha 
Rana  who,  when  the  Ghilzai  dynasty  was  rot- 
ting away  and  Viceroys  declared  themselves 
kings,  met,  defeated,  took  captive,  and  re- 
leased without  ransom,  Mahmoud  of  Malwa. 
Kumbha  Rana  built  a  Tower  of  Victory,  nine 
stories  high,  to  commemorate  this  and  the  other 
successes  of  his  reign,  and  the  tower  stands 
to-day  a  mark  for  miles  across  the  plains.  Of 
this,  more  hereafter. 

But  the  well-established  kingdom  weakened, 


no  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

and  the  rulers  took  favourites  and  disgusted 
their  best  supporters — after  the  immemorial 
custom  of  too  prosperous  rulers.  Also  they 
murdered  one  another.  In  1535  A.  D.  Bahadur 
Shah,  King  of  Gujarat,  seeing  the  decay,  and 
remembering  how  one  of  his  predecessors,  to- 
gether with  Mahmoud  of  Malwa,  had  been 
humbled  by  Mewar  in  years  gone  by,  set  out  to 
take  his  revenge  of  Time  and  Mewar  then  ruled 
by  Rana  Bikrmajit,  who  had  made  a  new  cap- 
ital at  Deola.  Bikrmajit  did  not  stay  to  give 
battle  in  that  place.  His  chiefs  were  out  of 
hand,  and  Chitor  was  the  heart  and  brain  of 
Mewar;  so  he  marched  thither,  and  the  Gods 
were  against  him.  Bahadur  Shah  mined  one  of 
the  Chitor  bastions  and  wiped  out  in  the  ex- 
plosion the  Hara  Prince  of  Boondee  with  five 
hundred  followers.  Jowahir  Bae,  Bikrma jit's 
mother,  headed  a  sally  from  the  walls  and  was 
slain.  There  were  Frank  gunners  among 
Bahadur  Shah's  forces,  and  they  hastened  the 
end.  The  Rajputs  made  a  second  johur  greater 
than  the  johur  of  Pudmini ;  and  thirteen  thou- 
sand were  blown  up  in  the  magazines,  or 
stabbed  or  poisoned,  before  the  gates  were 
opened  and  the  defenders  rushed  down. 

Out  of  the  carnage  was  saved  Udai  Singh,  a 
babe  of  the  Blood  Royal,  who  grew  up  to  be  a 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  in 

coward  and  a  shame  to  his  line.  The  story  of 
his  preservation  is  written  large  in  Tod,  and 
Edwin  Arnold  sings  it.  Read  it,  who  are  inter- 
ested. But,  when  Udai  Singh  came  to  the 
throne  of  Chitor,  through  blood  and  mis-rule, 
after  Bahadur  Shah  had  withdrawn  from  the 
wreck  of  the  Fort,  Akbar  sat  on  the  throne  of 
Delhi,  and  it  was  written  that  few  people 
should  withstand  the  "Guardian  of  Mankind." 
Moreover,  Udai  Singh  was  the  slave  of  a 
woman.  It  was  Akbar's  destiny  to  subdue  the 
Rajputs  and  to  win  many  of  them  to  his  own 
service;  sending  a  Rajput  Prince  of  Amber  to 
get  him  Arrakan.  Akbar  marched  against 
Chitor  once  and  was  repulsed ;  the  woman  who 
ruled  Udai  Singh  heading  a  charge  against  the 
besiegers  because  of  the  love  she  bore  to  her 
lover.  Something  of  this  sort  had  happened  in 
Ala-ud-din's  time,  and,  like  Ala-ud-din,  Akbar 
returned  and  sat  down,  in  a  huge  camp,  before 
Chitor  in  1568  A,  D.  Udai  Singh  fled  what 
was  coming ;  and  because  the  Goddess  of  Chitor 
demands  always  that  a  crowned  head  must  fall 
if  the  defence  of  her  home  is  to  be  successful, 
Chitor  fell  as  it  had  fallen  before — in  a  johur 
of  thousands,  a  last  rush  of  the  men,  and  the 
entry  of  the  conqueror  into  a  reeking,  ruined 
slaughter-pen.  Akbar's  sack  was  the  most 


H2  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

terrible  of  the  three,  for  he  killed  everything 
that  had  life  upon  the  rock,  and  wrecked  and 
overturned  and  spoiled.  The  wonder,  the  last- 
ing wonder,  is  that  he  did  not  destroy  Kumbha 
Rana's  Tower  of  Victory  and  memorial  of  the 
defeat  of  a  Mahomedan  prince.  With  the  third 
sack  the  glory  of  Chitor  departed,  and  Udai 
Singh  founded  himself  a  new  capital,  the  city 
of  Udaipur.  Though  Chitor  was  recovered  in 
Jehangir's  time  by  Udai  Singh's  grandson,  it 
was  never  again  made  the  capital  of  Mewar. 
It  stood  and  rooted  where  it  stood,  till  enlight- 
ened and  loyal  feudatories  in  the  present  years 
of  grace,  made  attempts,  with  the  help  of  Ex- 
ecutives, to  sweep  it  up  and  keep  it  in  repair. 
The  above  is  roughly,  very  roughly  indeed,  the 
tale  of  the  sacks  of  Chitor. 

Follows  an  interlude,  for  the  study  even  of 
inaccurate  history  is  indigestible  to  many. 
There  was  an  elephant  at  Chitor,  to  take  birds 
of  passage  up  the  hill,  and  she — she  was  fifty- 
one  years  old  and  her  name  was  Gerowlia — 
came  to  the  dak-bungalow  for  the  Englishman. 
Let  not  the  word  dak-bungalow  deceive  any 
man  into  believing  that  there  is  even  moderate 
comfort  at  Chitor.  Gerowlia  waited  in  the 
sunshine,  and  chuckled  to  herself  like  a  female 
pauper  when  she  receives  snuff.  The  mahout 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  113 

said  that  he  would  go  away  for  a  drink  of 
water.  So  he  walked,  and  walked,  and  walked, 
till  he  disappeared  on  the  stone-strewn  plains, 
and  the  Englishman  was  left  alone  with 
Gerowlia  aged  fifty-one.  She  had  been  tied  by 
the  chain  on  her  near  hind-leg  to  a  pillar  of  the 
verandah;  but  the  string  was  moonj  string 
only,  and  more  an  emblem  of  authority  than  a 
means  of  restraint.  When  she  had  thoroughly 
exhausted  all  the  resources  of  the  country  with- 
in range  of  her  trunk,  she  ate  up  the  string  and 
began  to  investigate  the  verandah.  There  was 
more  moonj  string,  and  she  ate  it  all,  while  the 
mistri  who  was  repairing  the  dak-bungalow 
cursed  her  and  her  ancestry  from  afar.  About 
this  time  the  Englishman  was  roused  to  a 
knowledge  of  the  business,  for  Gerowlia,  hav- 
ing exhausted  the  string,  tried  to  come  into  the 
verandah.  She  had,  most  unwisely,  been  pam- 
pered with  biscuits  an  hour  before.  The  mistri 
stood  on  an  outcrop  of  rock  and  said  angrily : — 
"See  what  damage  your  hathi  has  done, 
Sahib !"  "  'Tisn't  my  hathi  "  said  the  Sahib 
plaintively.  "You  ordered  it,"  quoth  the 
mistri,  "and  it  has  been  here  ever  so  long,  eat- 
ing up  everything."  Herewith  he  threw  pieces 
of  stone  at  Gerowlia  and  went  away.  It  is  a 
terrible  thing  to  be  left  alone  with  an  un- 


114  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

shackled  elephant,  even  though  she  be  a  ven- 
erable spinster.  Gerowlia  moved  round  the 
dak-bungalow,  blowing  her  nose  in  a  nervous 
and  undecided  manner  and,  presently,  found 
some  more  string,  which  she  ate.  This  was  too 
much.  The  Englishman  went  out  and  spoke  to 
her.  She  opened  her  mouth  and  salaamed; 
meaning  thereby  "biscuits."  So  long  as  she 
remained  in  this  position  she  could  do  no  harm. 
Imagine  a  boundless  rock-strewn  plain 
broken  here  and  there  by  low  hills,  dominated 
by  the  rock  of  Chitor  and  bisected  by  a  single, 
metre-gauge  railway  track  running  into  the  In- 
finite, and  unrelieved  by  even  a  way-inspector's 
trolly.  In  the  fore-ground  put  a  brand-new 
dak-bungalow  furnished  with  a  French  bed- 
stead and  nothing  else;  and,  in  the  verandah, 
place  an  embarrassed  Englishman,  smiling  into 
the  open  mouth  of  an  idiotic  female  elephant. 
But  Gerowlia  could  not  live  on  smiles  alone. 
Finding  that  no  food  was  forthcoming,  she 
shut  her  mouth  and  renewed  her  attempts  to 
get  into  the  verandah  and  ate  more  moonj 
string.  To  say  "H!"  to  an  elephant  is  a  mis- 
directed courtesy.  It  quickens  the  pace,  and, 
if  you  flick  her  on  the  trunk  with  a  wet  towel, 
she  curls  the  trunk  out  of  harm's  way.  Special 
education  is  necessary.  A  little  breechless  boy 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  115 

passed,  carrying  a  lump  of  stone.  "Hit  on  the 
feet,  Sahib!"  said  he;  "Hit  on  the  feet!" 
Gerowlia  had  by  this  time  nearly  scraped  off 
her  pad  and  there  were  no  signs  of  the  mahout. 
The  Englishman  went  out  and  found  a  tent- 
peg,  and  returning,  in  the  extremity  of  his 
wrath,  smote  her  bitterly  on  the  nails  of  the 
near  forefoot. 

Then,  as  Rider  Haggard  used  to  say — 
though  the  expression  was  patented  by  at  least 
one  writer  before  he  made  it  his  own — a  curi- 
ous thing  happened.  Gerowlia  held  up  her  foot 
to  be  beaten,  and  made  the  most  absurd  noises 
— squawked,  in  fact,  exactly  like  an  old  lady 
who  has  narrowly  escaped  being  run  over.  She 
backed  out  of  the  verandah,  still  squawking,  on 
three  feet  and  in  the  open  held  up  near  and  off 
forefoot  alternately  to  be  beaten.  It  was  very 
pitiful,  for  one  swing  of  her  trunk  could  have 
knocked  the  Englishman  flat.  He  ceased 
whacking  her,  but  she  squawked  for  some  min- 
utes and  then  fell  placidly  asleep  in  the  sun- 
shine. When  the  mahout  returned,  he  beat  her 
for  breaking  her  tether  exactly  as  the  English- 
man had  done,  but  much  more  severely,  and 
the  ridiculous  old  thing  hopped  on  three  legs 
for  fully  five  minutes.  "Come  along.  Sahib!" 
said  the  mahout,  "I  will  show  this  mother  of 


n6  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

bastards  who  is  the  mahout.  Fat  daughter  of 
the  Devil,  sit  down!  You  would  eat  string, 
would  you?  How  does  the  iron  taste?"  And 
he  gave  Gerowlia  a  headache,  which  affected 
her  temper  all  through  the  afternoon.  She  set 
off,  across  the  railway  line  which  runs  below 
the  rock  of  Chitor,  into  broken  ground  cut  up 
with  nullahs  and  covered  with  low  scrub,  over 
which  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  have  taken 
a  sure-footed  horse — so  fragmentary  and  dis- 
connected was  its  nature. 


XI. 


Proves  conclusively  the  Existence  of  the  Dark 
Tower  visited  by  Childe  Rolande  and  of 
"Bogey"  who  frightens  Children. 

THE  Gamberi  river — clear  as  a  trout  stream 
— runs  through  the  waste  round  Chitor, 
and  is  spanned  by  an  old  bridge,  very  solid  and 
massive,  said  to  have  been  built  before  the  sack 
of  Ala-ud-din.  The  bridge  is  in  the  middle  of 
the  stream — the  floods  have  raced  round  either 
end  of  it — and  is  reached  by  a  steeply  sloping 
stone  causeway.  From  the  bridge  to  the  new 
town  of  Chitor,  which  lies  at  the  foot  of  the 
hill,  runs  a  straight  and  well-kept  road,  flanked 
on  either  side  by  the  scattered  remnants  of  old 
houses,  and,  here  and  there,  fallen  temples. 
The  road,  like  the  bridge,  is  no  new  thing,  and 
is  wide  enough  for  twenty  horsemen  to  ride 
abreast. 

New  Chitor  is  a  very  dirty,  and  apparently 
thriving,  little  town,  full  of  grain-merchants 
and  sellers  of  arms.  The  ways  are  barely  wide 
enough  for  the  elephant  of  dignity  and  the  little 
brown  babies  of  impudence.  The  Englishman 


u8  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

went  through,  always  on  a  slope  painfully  ac- 
centuated by  Gerowlia  who,  with  all  possible 
respect  to  her  years,  must  have  been  a  baggage- 
animal  and  no  true  Sahib's  mount.  Let  the 
local  Baedeker  speak  for  a  moment:— "The 
ascent  to  Chitor,  which  begins  from  within  the 
south-east  angle  of  the  town,  is  nearly  a  mile  to 
the  upper  gate,  with  a  slope  of  about  i  in  15. 
There  are  two  zig-zag  bends,  and  on  the  three 
portions  thus  formed  are  seven  gates,  of  which 
one,  however,  has  only  the  basement  left." 
This  is  the  language  of  fact  which,  very 
properly,  leaves  out  of  all  account  the  Genius  of 
the  Place  who  sits  at  the  gate  nearest  the  new 
city  and  is  with  the  sightseer  throughout.  The 
first  impression  of  repulsion  and  awe  is  given 
by  a  fragment  of  tumbled  sculpture  close  to  a 
red  daubed  I'm  gam  near  the  Padal  Pol  or 
lowest  gate.  It  is  a  piece  of  frieze,  and  the  fig- 
ures of  the  men  are  worn  nearly  smooth  by 
time.  What  is  visible  is  finely  and  frankly  ob- 
scene to  an  English  mind. 

The  road  is  protected  on  the  khiid  side  by  a 
thick  stone  wall,  loopholed  for  musketry,  one 
aperture  to  every  two  feet,  between  fifteen  and 
twenty  feet  high.  This  wall  is  being  repaired 
throughout  its  length  by  the  Maharana  of 
Udaipur.  On  the  hill  side,  among  the  boul- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  119 

ders,  loose  stones  and  dhao-scrub,  lies  stone 
wreckage  that  must  have  come  down  from  the 
brown  bastions  above. 

As  Gerowlia  laboured  up  the  stone-shod 
slope,  the  Englishman  wondered  how  much  life 
had  flowed  down  this  sluice  of  battles,  and  been 
lost  at  the  Padal  Pol — the  last  and  lowest  gate 
—where,  in  the  old  days,  the  besieging  armies 
put  their  best  and  bravest  battalions.  Once  at 
the  head  of  the  lower  slope,  there  is  a  clear  run- 
down of  a  thousand  yards  with  no  chance  of 
turning  aside  either  to  the  right  or  left.  Even 
as  he  wondered,  he  was  brought  abreast  of  two 
stone  chhatris,  each  carrying  a  red  daubed 
stone.  They  were  the  graves  of  two  very  brave 
men,  Jeemal  of  Bednore,  and  Kalla,  who  fell  in 
Akbar's  sack  fighting  like  Rajputs.  Read  the 
story  of  their  deaths,  and  learn  what  manner  of 
warriors  they  were.  Their  graves  were  all 
that  spoke  openly  of  the  hundreds  of  struggles 
on  the  lower  slope  where  the  fight  was  always 
fiercest 

At  last,  after  half  an  hour's  climb,  the  main 
gate,  the  Ram  Pol,  was  gained,  and  the  Eng- 
lishman passed  into  the  City  of  Chitor  and — 
then  and  there  formed  a  resolution,  since 
broken,  not  to  write  one  word  about  it  for  fear 
that  he  should  be  set  down  as  a  babbling  and  a 


gushing  enthusiast.  Objects  of  archaeological 
interest  are  duly  described  in  an  admirable  little 
book  of  Chitor  which,  after  one  look,  the  Eng- 
lishman abandoned.  One  cannot  "do"  Chitor 
with  a  guide-book.  The  Padre  of  the  English 
Mission  to  Jehangir  said  the  best  that  was  to 
be  said,  when  he  described  the  place  three  hun- 
dred years  ago,  writing  quaintly : — "Chitor,  an 
ancient  great  kingdom,  the  chief  city  so  called 
which  standeth  on  a  mighty  high  hill,  flat  on 
the  top,  walled  about  at  the  least  ten  English 
miles.  There  appear  to  this  day  above  a  hun- 
dred ruined  churches  and  divers  fair  palaces 
which  are  lodged  in  like  manner  among  their 
ruins,  as  many  Englishmen  by  the  observation 
have  guessed.  Its  chief  inhabitants  to-day  are 
Zum  and  Ohim,  birds  and  wild  beasts,  but  the 
stately  ruins  thereof  give  a  shadow  of  its 
beauty  while  it  flourished  in  its  pride."  Ge- 
rowlia  struck  into  a  narrow  pathway,  forcing 
herself  through  garden-trees  and  disturbing 
the  peacocks.  An  evil  guide-man  on  the 
ground  waved  his  hand,  and  began  to  speak; 
but  was  silenced.  The  death  of  Amber  was  as 
nothing  to  the  death  of  Chitor — a  body  whence 
the  life  had  been  driven  by  riot  and  sword. 
Men  had  parcelled  the  gardens  of  her  palaces 
and  the  courtyards  of  her  temples  into  fields; 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  121 

and  cattle  grazed  among  the  remnants  of  the 
shattered  tombs.  But  over  all — over  rent  bas- 
tion, split  temple-wall,  pierced  roof  and  prone 
pillar — lay  the  "shadow  of  its  beauty  while  it 
flourished  in  its  pride."  The  Englishman 
walked  into  a  stately  palace  of  many  rooms, 
where  the  sunlight  streamed  in  through  wall 
and  roof,  and  up  crazy  stone  stairways,  held 
together,  it  seemed,  by  the  marauding  trees. 
In  one  bastion,  a  wind-sown  peepul  had 
wrenched  a  thick  slab  clear  of  the  wall,  but 
held  it  tight  pressed  in  a  crook  of  a  branch,  as 
a  man  holds  down  a  fallen  enemy  under  his 
elbow,  shoulder  and  forearm.  In  another 
place,  a  strange,  uncanny  wind,  sprung  from 
nowhere,  was  singing  all  alone  among  the  pil- 
lars of  what  may  have  been  a  Hall  of  Audience. 
The  Englishman  wandered  so  far  in  one  palace 
that  he  came  to  an  almost  black-dark  room, 
high  up  in  a  wall,  and  said  proudly  to  himself : 
— "I  must  be  the  first  man  who  has  been  here;" 
meaning  thereby  no  harm  or  insult  to  any  one. 
But  he  tripped  and  fell,  and  as  he  put  out  his 
hands,  he  felt  that  the  stairs  had  been  worn 
hollow  and  smooth  by  the  tread  of  innumerable 
naked  feet.  Then  he  was  afraid,  and  came 
away  very  quickly,  stepping  delicately  over 
fallen  friezes  and  bits  of  sculptured  men,  so  as 


122  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

not  to  offend  the  dead;  and  was  mightily  re- 
lieved when  he  recovered  his  elephant  and 
allowed  the  guide  to  take  him  to  Kumbha 
Rana's  Tower  of  Victory. 

This  stands,  like  all  things  in  Chitor,  among 
ruins,  but  time  and  the  other  enemies  have  been 
good  to  it.  It  is  a  Jain  edifice,  nine  storeys 
high,  crowned  atop — Was  this  designed  insult 
or  undesigned  repair? — with  a  purely  Mahom- 
edan  dome,  wherein  the  pigeons  and  the  bats 
live.  Excepting  this  blemish,  the  Tower  of 
Victory  is  nearly  as  fair  as  when  it  left  the 
hands  of  the  builder  whose  name  has  not  been 
handed  down  to  us.  It  is  to  be  observed  here 
that  the  first,  or  more  ruined,  Tower  of  Vic- 
tory, built  in  Alluji's  days,  when  Chitor  was 
comparatively  young,  was  raised  by  some  pious 
Jain,  as  proof  of  conquest  over  things  spiritual. 
The  second  tower  is  more  worldly  in  intent. 

Those  who  care  to  look,  may  find  elsewhere 
a  definition  of  its  architecture  and  its  more 
striking  peculiarities.  It  was  in  kind,  but  not 
in  degree,  like  the  Jugdesh  Temple  at  Udaipur, 
and,  as  it  exceeded  it  in  magnificence,  so  its 
effect  upon  the  mind  was  more  intense.  The 
confusing  intricacy  of  the  figures  with  which  it 
was  wreathed  from  top  to  bottom,  the  recur- 
rence of  the  one  calm  face,  the  God  enthroned, 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  123 

holding  the  Wheel  of  the  Law,  and  the  appal- 
ling lavishness  of  decoration,  all  worked 
towards  the  instilment  of  fear  and  aversion. 

Surely  this  must  have  been  one  of  the  objects 
of  the  architect.  The  tower,  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  its  stairways,  is  like  the  interior  of  a 
Chinese  carved  ivory  puzzle-ball.  The  idea 
given  is  that,  even  while  you  are  ascending,  you 
are  wrapping  yourself  deeper  and  deeper  in  the 
tangle  of  a  mighty  maze.  Add  to  this  the  half- 
light,  the  thronging  armies  of  sculptured  fig- 
ures, the  mad  profusion  of  design  splashed  as 
impartially  upon  the  undersides  of  the  stone 
window-slabs  as  upon  the  door-beam  of  the 
threshold — add,  most  abhorrent  of  all,  the  slip- 
pery sliminess  of  the  walls  worn  smooth  by 
naked  men,  and  you  will  understand  that  the 
tower  is  not  a  soothing  place  to  visit.  The 
Englishman  fancied  presumptuously  that  he 
had,  in  a  way,  grasped  the  builder's  idea;  and 
when  he  came  to  the  top  storey  and  sat  among 
the  pigeons  his  theory  was  this : — To  attain 
power,  wrote  the  builder  of  old,  in  sentences  of 
fine  stone,  it  is  necessary  to  pass  through  all 
sorts  of  close-packed  horrors,  treacheries,  bat- 
tles and  insults,  in  darkness  and  without  knowl- 
edge whether  the  road  leads  upward  or  into  a 
hopeless  cul-de-sac.  Kumbha  Rana  must  many 


124  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

times  have  climbed  to  the  top  storey,  and  looked 
out  towards  the  uplands  of  Mahva  on  the  one 
side  and  his  own  great  Mewar  on  the  other,  in 
the  days  when  all  the  rock  hummed  with  life 
and  the  clatter  of  hooves  upon  the  stony  ways, 
and  Mahmoud  of  Mahva  was  safe  in  hold. 
How  he  must  have  swelled  with  pride — fine  in- 
solent pride  of  life  and  rule  and  power, — 
power  not  only  to  break  things  but  to  compel 
such  builders  as  those  who  piled  the  tower  to 
his  royal  will !  There  was  no  decoration  in 
the  top  storey  to  bewilder  or  amaze — nothing 
but  well-grooved  stone-slabs,  and  a  boundless 
view  fit  for  kings  who  traced  their  ancestry — 

"From  times  when  forth  from  the  sunlight,  the  first  of 

our  kings  came  down, 

And  had  the  earth   for  his   footstool,   and  wore  the 
stars  for  his  crown." 

The  builder  had  left  no  mark  behind  him — 
not  even  a  mark  on  the  threshold  of  the  door, 
or  a  sign  in  the  head  of  the  topmost  step.  The 
Englishman  looked  in  both  places,  believing 
that  those  were  the  places  generally  chosen  for 
mark-cutting.  So  he  sat  and  meditated  on  the 
beauties  of  kingship,  and  the  unholiness  of 
Hindu  art,  and  what  power  a  shadow-land  of 
lewd  monstrosities  had  upon  those  who  believed 
in  it,  and  what  Lord  Dufferin,  who  is  the  near- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  125 

est  approach  to  a  king  in  this  India,  must  have 
thought  when  A.-D.-C.'s  clanked  after  him  up 
the  narrow  steps.  But  the  day  was  wearing, 
and  he  came  down — in  both  senses — and,  in 
his  descent,  the  carven  things  on  every  side  of 
the  tower  and  above  and  below,  once  more  took 
hold  of  and  perverted  his  fancy,  so  that  he 
arrived  at  the  bottom  in  a  frame  of  mind  emi- 
nently fitted  for  a  descent  into  the  Gau-Mukh, 
which  is  nothing  more  terrible  than  a  little 
spring,  falling  into  a  reservoir,  in  the  side  of 
the  hill. 

He  stumbled  across  more  ruins  and  passed 
between  tombs  of  dead  Ranis,  till  he  came  to  a 
flight  of  steps,  built  out  and  cut  out  from  rock, 
going  down  as  far  as  he  could  see  into  a  growth 
of  trees  on  a  terrace  below  him.  The  stone  of 
the  steps  had  been  worn  and  polished  by  naked 
feet  till  it  showed  its  markings  clearly  as  agate ; 
and  where  the  steps  ended  in  a  rock-slope,  there 
was  a  visible  glair,  a  great  snail  track,  upon  the 
rocks.  It  was  hard  to  keep  safe  footing  on  the 
sliminess.  The  air  was  thick  with  the  sick 
smell  of  stale  incense,  and  grains  of  rice  were 
scattered  upon  the  steps.  But  there  was  no  one 
to  be  seen.  Now  this  in  itself  was  not  specially 
alarming ;  but  the  Genius  of  the  Place  must  be 
responsible  for  making  it  so.  The  Englishman 


126  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

slipped  and  bumped  on  the  rocks,  and  arrived, 
more  suddenly  than  he  desired,  upon  the  edge 
of  a  dull  blue  tank,  sunk  between  walls  of  time- 
less masonry.  In  a  slabbed-in  recess,  water  was 
pouring  through  a  shapeless  stone  gargoyle, 
into  a  trough ;  which  trough  again  dripped  into 
the  tank.  Almost  under  the  little  trickle  of 
water,  was  the  loathsome  Emblem  of  Creation, 
and  there  were  flowers  and  rice  around  it. 
Water  was  trickling  from  a  score  of  places  in 
the  cut  face  of  the  hill,  oozing  between  the 
edges  of  the  steps  and  welling  up  between  the 
stone  slabs  of  the  terrace.  Trees  sprouted  in 
the  sides  of  the  tank  and  hid  its  surroundings. 
It  seemed  as  though  the  descent  had  led  the 
Englishman,  firstly,  two  thousand  years  away 
from  his  own  century,  and  secondly,  into  a 
trap,  and  that  he  would  fall  off  the  polished 
stones  into  the  stinking  tank,  or  that  the  Gau- 
Mukh  would  continue  to  pour  water  placidly 
until  the  tank  rose  up  and  swamped  him,  or 
that  some  of  the  stone  slabs  would  fall  forward 
and  crush  him  flat. 

Then  he  was  conscious  of  remembering,  with 
peculiar  and  unnecessary  distinctness,  that, 
from  the  Gau-Mukh,  a  passage  led  to  the  sub- 
terranean chambers  in  which  fair  Pudmini  and 
her  handmaids  had  slain  themselves.  Also, 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          127 

that  Tod  had  written  and  the  Station-master  at 
Chitor  had  said,  that  some  sort  of  devil,  or 
ghoul,  or  some  thing,  stood  at  the  entrance  of 
that  approach.  All  of  which  was  a  nightmare 
bred  in  full  day,  and  folly  to  boot;  but  it  was 
the  fault  of  the  Genius  of  the  Place,  who  made 
the  Englishman  feel  that  he  had  done  a  great 
wrong  in  trespassing  into  the  very  heart  and 
soul  of  all  Chitor.  And,  behind  him,  the  Gau- 
Mukh  guggled  and  choked  like  a  man  in  his 
death-throe.  The  Englishman  endured  as  long 
as  he  could — about  two  minutes.  Then  it  came 
upon  him  that  he  must  go  quickly  out  of  this 
place  of  years  and  blood — must  get  back  to  the 
afternoon  sunshine,  and  Gerowlia,  and  the  dak- 
bungalow  with  the  French  bedstead.  He  de- 
sired no  archaeological  information,  he  wished 
to  take  no  notes,  and,  above  all,  he  did  not 
care  to  look  behind  him,  where  stood  the  re- 
minder that  he  was  no  better  than  the  beasts 
that  perish.  But  he  had  to  cross  the  smooth, 
worn  rocks,  and  he  felt  their  sliminess  through 
his  boot-soles.  It  was  as  though  he  were  tread- 
ing on  the  soft,  oiled  skin  of  a  Hindu.  As 
soon  as  the  steps  gave  refuge,  he  floundered  up 
them,  and  so  came  out  of  the  Gau-Mukh,  be- 
dewed with  that  perspiration  which  follows 
alike  on  honest  toil  or — childish  fear. 


128          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

"This,"  said  he  to  himself,  "is  absurd !"  and 
sat  down  on  the  fallen  top  of  a  temple  to  re- 
view the  situation.  But  the  Gau-Mukh  had 
disappeared.  He  could  see  the  dip  in  the 
ground,  and  the  beginning  of  the  steps,  but 
nothing  more. 

In  defence,  it  may  be  urged  that  there  is 
moral,  just  as  much  as  there  is  mine,  choke- 
damp.  If  you  get  into  a  place  laden  with  the 
latter  you  die,  and  if  into  the  home  of  the  for- 
mer you  .  .  .  behave  unwisely,  as  constitution 
and  temperament  prompt.  If  any  man  doubt 
this,  let  him  sit  for  two  hours  in  a  hot  sun  on 
an  elephant,  stay  half-an-hour  in  the  Tower  of 
Victory,  and  then  go  down  into  the  Gau-Mukh, 
which,  it  must  never  be  forgotten,  is  merely  a 
set  of  springs  "three  or  four  in  number,  issu- 
ing from  the  cliff  face  at  cow-mouth  carvings, 
now  mutilated.  The  water  evidently  percolat- 
ing from  the  Hathi  Kund  above,  falls  first  in 
an  old  pillared  hall  and  thence  into  the  masonry 
reservoir  below,  eventually,  when  abundant 
enough,  supplying  a  little  waterfall  lower 
down."  That,  Gentlemen  and  Ladies,  on  the 
honour  of  one  who  has  been  frightened  of  the 
dark  in  broad  daylight,  is  the  Gau-Mukh,  as 
though  photographed. 

The  Englishman  regained  Gerowlia  and  de- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  129 

manded  to  be  taken  away,  but  Gerowlia's  driver 
went  forward  instead  and  showed  him  a  new 
Mahal  just  built  by  the  present  Maharana.  If 
a  fourth  sack  of  Chitor  could  be  managed  for 
a  Viceroy's  edification,  the  blowing  up  of  the 
new  Mahal  would  supply  a  pleasant  evening's 
entertainment.  Near  the  Mahal  lie  the  remains 
of  the  great  tanks  of  Chitor,  for  the  hill  has, 
through  a  great  part  of  its  length,  a  depres- 
sion in  the  centre  which,  by  means  of  bunds, 
stored,  in  the  old  time,  a  full  supply  of  water. 
A  general  keeping  in  order  is  visible  through- 
out many  of  the  ruins;  and,  in  places,  a  car- 
riage-drive is  being  constructed.  Carriage- 
drives,  however,  do  not  consort  well  with 
Chitor  and  the  "shadow  of  her  ancient  beauty." 
The  return  journey,  past  temple  after  temple 
and  palace  upon  palace,  began  in  the  failing 
light,  and  Gerowlia  was  still  blundering  up  and 
down  narrow  bye-paths — for  she  possessed  all 
an  old  woman's  delusion  as  to  the  slimness  of 
her  waist — when  the  twilight  fell,  and  the 
smoke  from  the  town  below  began  to  creep  up 
the  brown  flanks  of  Chitor,  and  the  jackals 
howled.  Then  the  sense  of  desolation,  which 
had  been  strong  enough  in  all  conscience  in  the 
sunshine,  began  to  grow  and  grow : — 


130          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

"The  sun's  eye  had  a  sickly  glare, 
The  earth  with  age  was  wan, 

The  skeletons  of  ages  stood 
Around  that  lonely  man." 

Near  the  Ram  Pol  there  was  some  semblance 
of  a  town  with  living  people  in  it,  and  a  priest 
sat  in  the  middle  of  the  road  and  howled  aloud 
upon  his  Gods,  until  a  little  boy  came  and 
laughed  in  his  face  heretically,  and  he  went 
away  grumbling.  This  touch  was  deeply  re- 
freshing; in  the  contemplation  of  it,  the  Eng- 
lishman clean  forgot  that  he  had  overlooked 
the  gathering  in  of  materials  for  an  elaborate 
statistical,  historical,  geographical  account  of 
Chitor.  All  that  remained  to  him  was  a  shud- 
dering reminiscence  of  the  Gau-Mukh  and  two 
lines  of  the  "Holy  Grail"  :— 

"And  up  into  the  sounding  halls  he  passed, 
But  nothing  in  the  sounding  halls  he  saw." 

Post  Scriptum. — There  was  something  very 
uncanny  about  the  Genius  of  the  Place.  He 
dragged  an  ease-loving  egotist  out  of  the 
French  bedstead  with  the  gilt  knobs  at  head  and 
foot,  into  a  more  than  usually  big  folly — noth- 
ing less  than  a  seeing  of  Chitor  by  moonlight. 
There  was  no  possibility  of  getting  Gerowlia 
out  of  her  bed,  and  a  mistrust  of  the  Maha- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  131 

rana's  soldiery  who  in  the  daytime  guarded 
the  gates,  prompted  the  Englishman  to  avoid 
the  public  way,  and  scramble  straight  up  the 
hillside,  along  an  attempt  at  a  path  which  he 
had  noted  from  Gerowlia's  back.  There  was 
no  one  to  interfere,  and  nothing  but  an  infinity 
of  pestilent  nullahs  and  loose  stones  to  check. 
Owls  came  out  and  hooted  at  him,  and  animals 
ran  about  in  the  dark  and  made  uncouth  noises. 
It  was  an  idiotic  journey,  and  it  ended — Oh 
horror!  in  that  unspeakable  Gau-Mukh — this 
time  entered  from  the  opposite  or  brush- 
wooded  side,  as  far  as  could  be  made  out  in 
the  dusk  and  from  the  chuckle  of  the  water 
which,  by  night,  was  peculiarly  malevolent. 

Escaping  from  this  place,  crab-fashion,  the 
Englishman  crawled  into  Chitor  and  sat  upon  a 
flat  tomb  till  the  moon,  a  very  inferior  and 
second-hand  one,  rose,  and  turned  the  city  of 
the  dead  into  a  city  of  scurrying  ghouls — in 
sobriety,  jackals.  Also,  the  ruins  took  strange 
shapes  and  shifted  in  the  half  light  and  cast  ob- 
jectionable shadows. 

It  was  easy  enough  to  fill  the  rock  with  the 
people  of  old  times,  and  a  very  beautiful  ac- 
count of  Chitor  restored,  made  out  by  the  help 
of  Tod,  and  bristling  with  the  names  of  the 
illustrious  dead,  would  undoubtedly  have  been 
written,  had  not  a  woman,  a  living,  breathing 


132          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

woman,  stolen  out  of  a  temple — What  was  she 
doing  in  that  galley? — and  screamed  in  pierc- 
ing and  public-spirited  fashion.  The  English- 
man got  off  the  tomb  and  departed  rather  more 
noisily  than  a  jackal;  feeling  for  the  moment 
that  he  was  not  much  better.  Somebody 
opened  a  door  with  a  crash,  and  a  man  cried 
out: — "Who  is  there?"  But  the  cause  of  the 
disturbance  was,  for  his  sins,  being  most  hor- 
ribly scratched  by  some  thorny  scrub  over  the 
edge  of  the  hill — there  are  no  bastions  worth 
speaking  of  near  the  Gau-Mukh — and  the  rest 
was  partly  rolling,  partly  scrambling,  and 
mainly  bad  language. 

When  you  are  too  lucky  sacrifice  something, 
a  beloved  pipe  for  choice,  to  Ganesh.  The 
Englishman  has  seen  Chitor  by  moonlight — 
not  the  best  moonlight  truly,  but  the  watery 
glare  of  a  nearly  spent  moon — and  his  sacrifice 
to  Luck  is  this.  He  will  never  try  to  describe 
what  he  has  seen — but  will  keep  it  as  a  love- 
letter,  a  thing  for  one  pair  of  eyes  only — a 
memory  that  few  men  to-day  can  be  sharers  in. 
And  does  he,  through  this  fiction,  evade  insult- 
ing, by  the  dauberie  of  pen  and  ink,  a  scene  as 
lovely,  wild,  and  unmatchable  as  any  that  mor- 
tal eyes  have  been  privileged  to  rest  upon  ? 

An  intelligent  and  discriminating  public  are 
perfectly  at  liberty  to  form  their  own  opinions. 


XII. 


Contains  the  History  of  the  Bhumia  of  Jhar- 
wasa,  and  the  Record  of  a  Visit  to  the  House 
of  Strange  Stories.  Demonstrates  the 
Felicity  of  Loaferdom,  which  is  the  veritable 
Companionship  of  the  Indian  Empire,  and 
proposes  a  Scheme  for  the  better  Officering 
of  two  Departments. 

COME  away  from  the  monstrous  gloom  of 
Chitor  and  escape  northwards.  The 
place  is  unclean  and  terrifying.  Let  us  catch 
To-day  by  both  hands  and  return  to  the  Sta- 
tion-master— who  is  also  booking,  parcels  and 
telegraph  clerk,  and  who  never  seems  to  go  to 
bed — and  to  the  comfortably  wadded  bunks  of 
the  Rajputana-Malwa  line. 

While  the  train  is  running,  be  pleased  to 
listen  to  the  perfectly  true  story  of  the  bhumia 
of  Jharwasa,  which  is  a  story  the  sequel  where- 
of has  yet  to  be  written.  Once  upon  a  time,  a 
Rajput  landholder,  a  bhumia,  and  a  Mahom- 
edan  jaghirdar,  were  next-door  neighbors  in 
Ajmir  territory.  They  hated  each  other  thor- 
oughly for  many  reasons,  all  connected  with 


134          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

land ;  and  the  jaghirdar  was  the  bigger  man  of 
the  two.  In  those  days,  it  was  the  law  that 
victims  of  robbery  or  dacoity  should  be  reim- 
bursed by  the  owner  of  the  lands  on  which  the 
affair  had  taken  place.  The  ordinance  is  now 
swept  away  as  impracticable.  There  was  a 
highway  robbery  on  the  bhumia's  holding ;  and 
he  vowed  that  it  had  been  "put  up"  by  the 
Mahomedan  who,  he  said,  was  an  Ahab.  The 
reive-gelt  payable  nearly  ruined  the  Rajput, 
and  he,  labouring  under  a  galling  grievance  or 
a  groundless  suspicion,  fired  the  jaghirdar's 
crops,  was  detected  and  brought  up  before  the 
English  Judge  who  gave  him  four  years'  im- 
prisonment. To  the  sentence  was  appended  a 
recommendation  that,  on  release,  the  Rajput 
should  be  put  on  heavy  securities  for  good  be- 
haviour. "Otherwise,"  wrote  the  Judge,  who 
seems  to  have  known  the  people  he  was  dealing 
with,  "he  will  certainly  kill  the  jaghirdar." 
Four  years  passed,  and  the  jaghirdar  obtained 
wealth  and  consideration,  and  was  made,  let 
us  say,  a  Khan  Bahadur,  and  an  Honorary 
Magistrate;  but  the  bhumia  remained  in  gaol 
and  thought  over  the  highway  robbery.  When 
the  day  of  release  came,  a  new  Judge  hunted 
up  his  predecessor's  finding  and  recommenda- 
tion, and  would  have  put  the  bhumia  on  se- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          135 

curity.  "Sahib,"  said  the  bhumia,  "I  have 
no  people.  I  have  been  in  gaol.  What  am  I 
now?  And  who  will  find  security  for  me?  If 
you  will  send  me  back  to  gaol  again  I  can  do 
nothing,  and  I  have  no  friends."  So  they  re- 
leased him,  and  he  went  away  into  an  outlying 
village  and  borrowed  a  sword  from  one  house, 
and  had  it  sharpened  in  another,  for  love.  Two 
days  later  fell  the  birthday  of  the  Khan  Baha- 
dur and  the  Honorary  Magistrate,  and  his 
friends  and  servants  and  dependents  made  a 
little  durbar  and  did  him  honour  after  the  na- 
tive custom.  The  bhumia  also  attended  the 
levee,  but  no  one  knew  him,  and  he  was 
stopped  at  the  door  of  the  courtyard  by  the 
servant.  "Say  that  the  bhumia  of  Jharwasa 
has  come  to  pay  his  salaams,"  said  he.  They 
let  him  in,  and  in  the  heart  of  Ajmir  City,  in 
broad  daylight  and  before  all  the  jaghirdar's 
household,  he  smote  off  his  enemy's  head  so 
that  it  rolled  upon  the  ground.  Then  he  fled, 
and  though  they  raised  the  country-side  against 
him  he  was  never  caught,  and  went  into  Bi- 
kaner. 

Five  years  later,  word  came  to  Ajmir  that 
Chimbo  Singh,  the  bhumia  of  Jharwasa,  had 
taken  service  under  the  Thakur  Sahib  of  Pali- 
tana.  The  case  was  an  old  one,  and  the  chances 
of  identification  musty,  but  the  suspected  was 


136  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

caught  and  brought  in,  and  one  of  the  leading 
native  barristers  of  the  Bombay  Bar  was  re- 
tained to  defend  him.  He  said  nothing  and 
continued  to  say  nothing,  and  the  case  fell 
through.  He  is  believed  to  be  "wanted"  now 
for  a  fresh  murder  committed  within  the  last 
few  months,  out  Bikanir  way. 

And  now  that  the  train  has  reached  Ajmir, 
the  Crewe  of  Rajputana,  whither  shall  a  tramp 
turn  his  feet  ?  The  Englishman  set  his  stick  on 
end,  and  it  fell  with  its  point  North- West  as 
nearly  as  might  be.  This  being  translated, 
meant  Jodhpur,  which  is  the  city  of  the  Hou- 
yhnhnms  and,  that  all  may  be  in  keeping,  the 
occasional  resting-place  of  fugitive  Yahoos.  If 
you  would  enjoy  Jodhpur  thoroughly,  quit  at 
Ajmir  the  decent  conventionalities  of  "station" 
life,  and  make  it  your  business  to  move  among 
gentlemen — gentlemen  in  the  Ordnance  of  the 
Commissariat,  or,  better  still,  gentlemen  on  the 
Railway.  At  Ajmir,  gentlemen  will  tell  you 
what  manner  of  place  Jodhpur  is,  and  their  ac- 
counts, though  flavoured  with  crisp  and  curd- 
ling oaths,  are  amusing.  In  their  eyes  the 
desert  that  rings  the  city  has  no  charms,  and 
they  discuss  affairs  of  the  State,  as  they  un- 
derstand them,  in  a  manner  that  would  curl 
the  hair  on  a  Political's  august  head.  Jodhpur 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  137 

has  been,  but  things  are  rather  better  now,  a 
much- favoured  camping  ground  for  the  light- 
cavalry  of  the  road — the  loafers  with  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  brain  and  great  assurance. 
The  explanation  is  simple.  There  are  more 
than  four  hundred  horses  in  His  Highness's 
city  stables  alone;  and  where  the  Houyhnhnm 
is,  there  also  will  be  the  Yahoo.  This  is  sad 
but  true. 

Besides  the  Uhlans  who  come  and  go  on 
Heaven  knows  what  mysterious  errands,  there 
are  bag-men  travelling  for  the  big  English 
firms.  Jodhpur  is  a  good  customer,  and  pur- 
chases all  sorts  of  things,  more  or  less  useful, 
for  the  State  or  its  friends.  These  are  the 
gentlemen  to  know,  if  you  would  understand 
something  of  matters  which  are  not  written  in 
reports. 

The  Englishman  took  a  train  from  Ajmir  to 
Marwar  Junction,  which  is  on  the  road  to 
Mount  Abu,  westward  from  Ajmir,  and  at  five 
in  the  morning,  under  pale  moonlight,  was 
uncarted  at  the  beginning  of  the  Jodhpur  State 
Railway — one  of  the  quaintest  little  lines  that 
ever  ran  a  locomotive.  It  is  the  Maharaja's 
very  own,  and  pays  about  ten  per  cent. ;  but 
its  quaintness  does  not  lie  in  these  things.  It 
is  worked  with  rude  economy,  and  started  life 


138  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

by  singularly  and  completely  falsifying  the 
Government  estimates  for  its  construction.  An 
intelligent  Bureau  asserted  that  it  could  not 
be  laid  down  for  less  than — but  the  error  shall 
be  glossed  over.  It  was  laid  down  for  a  little 
more  than  seventeen  thousand  rupees  a  mile, 
with  the  help  of  second-hand  rails  and  sleep- 
ers; and  it  is  currently  asserted  that  the  Sta- 
tion-masters are  flagmen,  pointsmen,  ticket- 
collectors  and  everything  else,  except  plat- 
forms and  lamp-rooms.  As  only  two  trains 
are  run  in  the  twenty-four  hours,  this  econ- 
omy of  staff  does  not  matter  in  the  least.  The 
State  line,  with  the  comparatively  new  branch 
to  the  Pachbadra  salt-pits,  pays  handsomely, 
and  is  exactly  suited  to  the  needs  of  its  users. 
True,  there  is  a  certain  haziness  as  to  the  hour 
of  starting,  but  this  allows  laggards  more  time 
and  fills  the  packed  carriages  to  overflowing. 
From  Marwar  Junction  to  Jodhpur,  the 
train  leaves  the  Aravalis  and  goes  northwards 
into  "the  region  of  death"  that  lies  beyond  the 
Luni  River.  Sand,  ak  bushes,  and  sand-hills, 
varied  with  occasional  patches  of  unthrifty 
cultivation,  make  up  the  scenery.  Rain  has 
been  very  scarce  in  Marwar  this  year,  and  the 
country,  consequently,  shows  at  its  worst,  for 
almost  every  square  mile  of  the  kingdom  near- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  139 

ly  as  large  as  Scotland  is  dependent  on  the  sky 
for  its  crops.  In  a  good  season,  a  large  village 
can  pay  from  seven  to  nine  thousand  rupees 
revenue  without  blenching.  In  a  bad  one,  "all 
the  king's  horses  and  all  the  king's  men"  may 
think  themselves  lucky  if  they  raise  "rupees 
fifteen  only"  from  the  same  place.  The  fluc- 
tuation is  startling. 

From  a  country-side,  which  to  the  uninitiated 
seems  about  as  valuable  as  a  stretch  of  West 
African  beach,  the  State  gets  a  revenue  of 
nearly  forty  lakhs;  and  men  who  know  the 
country  vow  that  it  has  not  been  one  tithe 
exploited,  and  that  there  is  more  to  be  made 
from  salt  and  marble  and — curious  thing  in 
this  wilderness — good  forest  conservancy,  than 
an  open-handed  Durbar  dreams  of.  An  ami- 
able weakness  for  unthinkingly  giving  away 
villages  where  ready  cash  failed,  has  some- 
what hampered  the  revenue  in  past  years;  but 
now — and  for  this  the  Maharaja  deserves 
great  credit — Jodhpur  has  a  large  and  genuine 
surplus,  and  a  very  compact  little  scheme  of 
railway  extension.  Before  turning  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  City  of  Jodhpur,  hear  a  true, 
story  in  connection  with  the  Hyderabad-Pach- 
badra  project  which  those  interested  in  the 
scheme  may  lay  to  heart. 


140          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

His  State  line,  his  "ownest  own,"  as  has 
been  said,  very  much  delighted  the  Maharaja 
who,  in  one  or  two  points,  is  not  unlike  Sir 
Theodore  Hope  of  sainted  memory.  Pleased 
with  the  toy,  he  said  effusively,  in  words  which 
may  or  may  not  have  reached  the  ears  of  the 
Hyderabad-Pachbadra  people: — "This  is  a 
good  business.  If  the  Government  will  give 
me  independent  jurisdiction,  I'll  make  and  open 
the  line  straightaway  from  Pachbadra  to  the 
end  of  my  dominions,  i.  e.,  all  but  to  Hydera- 
bad." 

Then  "up  and  spake  an  elder  knight,  sat  at 
the  King's  right  knee,"  who  knew  something 
about  the  railway  map  of  India,  and  the  Con- 
trolling Power  of  strategical  lines: — "Maha- 
raja Sahib — here  is  the  Indus  Valley  State  and 
here  is  the  Bombay-Baroda.  Where  would  you 
be?"  "By  Jove,"  quoth  the  Maharaja,  though 
he  swore  by  quite  another  god :  "I  see !"  and 
thus  he  abandoned  the  idea  of  a  Hyderabad 
line,  and  turned  his  attention  to  an  extension 
to  Nagore,  with  a  branch  to  the  Makrana 
marble-quarries  which  are  close  to  the  Sam- 
bhar  salt  lake  near  Jeypore.  And,  in  the  ful- 
ness of  time,  that  extension  will  be  made  and 
perhaps  extended  to  Bahawalpur. 

The  Englishman  came  to  Jodhpur  at  mid- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  141 

day,  in  a  hot,  fierce  sunshine  that  struck  back 
from  the  sands  and  the  ledges  of  red-rock,  as 
though  it  were  May  instead  of  December.  The 
line  scorned  such  a  thing  as  a  regular  ordained 
terminus.  The  single  track  gradually  melted 
away  into  the  sands.  Close  to  the  station  was 
a  grim  stone  dak-bungalow,  and  in  the  veran- 
dah stood  a  brisk,  bag  and  flash-begirdled  in- 
dividual, cracking  his  joints  with  excess  of 
irritation.  He  was  also  snorting  like  an  im- 
patient horse. 

Nota  Bene. — When  one  is  on  the  road  it  is 
above  all  things  necessary  to  "pass  the  time 
o'day"  to  fellow-wanderers.  Failure  to  com- 
ply with  this  law  implies  that  the  offender  is 
"too  good  for  his  company;"  and  this,  on  the 
road,  is  an  unpardonable  sin.  The  Englishman 
"passed  the  time  o'day"  in  due  and  ample 
form.  "Ha!  Ha!"  said  the  gentleman  with 
the  bag.  "Isn't  this  a  sweet  place?  There 
ain't  no  ticca-gharries,  and  there  ain't  nothing 
to  eat,  if  you  haven't  brought  your  vittles,  an' 
they  charge  you  three-eight  for  a  bottle  of 
whiskey.  An'  Encore  at  that!  Oh!  It's  a 
sweet  place."  Here  he  skipped  about  the  ve- 
randah and  puffed.  Then  turning  upon  the 
Englishman,  he  said  fiercely: — "What  have 
you  come  here  for?"  Now  this  was  rude,  be- 


142 

cause  the  ordinary  form  of  salutation  on  the 
road  is  usually: — "And  what  are  you  for?" 
meaning,  "what  house  do  you  represent?" 
The  Englishman  answered  dolefully  that  he 
was  travelling  for  pleasure,  which  simple  ex- 
planation offended  the  little  man  with  the 
courier-bag.  He  snapped  his  joints  more  ex- 
cruciatingly than  ever: — "For  pleasure!  My 
God!  For  pleasure!  Come  here  an'  wait  five 
weeks  for  your  money,  an'  mark  what  I'm 
tellin'  you  now,  you  don't  get  it  then!  But 
per'aps  your  ideas  of  pleasure  is  different  from 
most  peoples'.  For  pleasure!  Yah!"  He 
skipped  across  the  sand  towards  the  station, 
for  he  was  going  back  with  the  down  train, 
and  vanished  in  a  whirlwind  of  luggage  and 
the  fluttering  of  female  skirts:  in  Jodhpur 
women  are  baggage-coolies.  A  level,  drawling 
voice  spoke  from  an  inner  room: — 'E's  a  bit 
upset.  That's  what  'e  is!  I  remember  when 
I  was  at  Gworlior" — the  rest  of  the  story  was 
lost,  and  the  Englishman  set  to  work  to  dis- 
cover the  nakedness  of  the  dak-bungalow.  For 
reasons  which  do  not  concern  the  public,  it  is 
made  as  bitterly  uncomfortable  as  possible. 
The  food  is  infamous,  and  the  charges  seem 
to  be  wilfully  pitched  about  eighty  per  cent 
above  the  tariff,  so  that  some  portion  of  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  143 

bill,  at  least,  may  be  paid  without  bloodshed, 
or  the  unseemly  defilement  of  walls  with  the 
contents  of  drinking-glasses.  This  is  short- 
sighted policy,  and  it  would,  perhaps,  be  better 
to  lower  the  prices  and  hide  the  tariff,  and  put 
a  guard  about  the  house  to  prevent  jackal- 
molested  donkeys  from  stampeding  into  the 
verandahs.  But  these  be  details.  Jodhpur 
dak-bungalow  is  a  merry,  merry  place,  and 
any  writer  in  search  of  new  ground  to  locate 
a  madly  improbable  story  in,  could  do  no  bet- 
ter than  study  it  diligently.  In  front  lies  sand, 
riddled  with  innumerable  ant-holes,  and,  be- 
yond the  sand,  the  red  sandstone  wall  of  the 
city,  and  the  Mahomedan  burying-ground  that 
fringes  it.  Fragments  of  sandstone  set  on  end 
mark  the  resting  places  of  the  faithful  who 
are  of  no  great  account  here.  Above  every- 
thing, a  mark  for  miles  round,  towers  the  dun- 
red  piles  of  the  Fort  which  is  also  a  Palace. 
This  is  set  upon  sandstone  rock  whose  sharper 
features  have  been  worn  smooth  by  the  wash 
of  the  wind-blown  sand.  It  is  as  monstrous 
as  anything  in  Dore's  illustrations  of  the 
C antes  Drolatiques  and,  wherever  it  wanders, 
the  eye  comes  back  at  last  to  its  fantastic  bulk. 
There  is  no  greenery  on  the  rock,  nothing  but 
fierce  sunlight  or  black  shadow.  A  line  of  red 


144  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

hills  forms  the  background  of  the  city,  and 
this  is  as  bare  as  the  picked  bones  of  camels 
that  lie  bleaching  on  the  sand  below. 

Wherever  the  eye  falls,  it  sees  a  camel  or  a 
string  of  camels — lean,  racer-built  sowarri 
camels,  or  heavy,  black,  shag-haired  trading- 
ships  bent  on  their  way  to  the  Railway  Station. 
Through  the  night  the  air  is  alive  with  the 
bubbling  and  howling  of  the  brutes,  who  as- 
suredly must  suffer  from  nightmare.  In  the 
morning  the  chorus  round  the  station  is  deaf- 
ening. A  camel  has  as  wide  a  range  of  speech 
as  an  elephant.  The  Englishman  found  a  little 
one,  crooning  happily  to  itself,  all  alone  on  the 
sands.  Its  nose-string  was  smashed.  Hence 
its  joy.  But  a  big  man  left  the  station  and 
beat  it  on  the  neck  with  a  seven-foot  stick, 
and  it  rose  up  and  sobbed. 

Knowing  what  these  camels  meant,  but  trust- 
ing nevertheless  that  the  road  would  not  be 
very  bad,  the  Englishman  went  into  the  city, 
left  a  well-kunkered  road,  turned  through  a 
sand-worn,  red  sandstone  gate,  and  sunk  ankle- 
deep  in  fine  reddish-white  sand.  This  was  the 
main  thoroughfare  of  the  city.  Two  tame 
lynxes  shared  it  with  a  donkey;  and  the  rest 
of  the  population  seemed  to  have  gone  to  bed. 
In  the  hot  weather,  between  ten  in  the  morning 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  145 

and  four  in  the  afternoon  all  Jodhpur  stays  at 
home  for  fear  of  death  by  sunstroke,  and  it  is 
possible  that  the  habit  extends  far  into  what 
is  officially  called  the  "cold  weather;"  or,  per- 
haps, being  brought  up  among  the  sands,  men 
do  not  care  to  tramp  them  for  pleasure.  The 
city  internally  is  a  walled  and  secret  place; 
each  courtyard  being  hidden  from  view  by  a 
red  sandstone  wall,  except  in  a  few  streets 
where  the  shops  are  poor  and  mean. 

In  an  old  house  now  used  for  the  storing  of 
tents,  Akbar's  mother  lay  two  months,  before 
the  "Guardian  of  Mankind"  was  born,  draw- 
ing breath  for  her  flight  to  Umarkot  across 
the  desert.  Seeing  this  place,  the  Englishman 
thought  of  many  things  not  worth  the  putting 
down  on  paper,  and  went  on  till  the  sand  grew 
deeper  and  deeper,  and  a  great  camel,  heavily 
laden  with  stone,  came  round  a  corner  and 
nearly  stepped  on  him.  As  the  evening  drew 
on,  the  city  woke  up,  and  the  goats  and  the 
camels  and  the  kine  came  in  by  hundreds, 
and  men  said  that  wild  pig,  which  are  strictly 
preserved  by  the  Princes  for  their  own  sport, 
were  in  the  habit  of  wandering  about  the  roads. 
Now  if  they  do  this  in  the  capital,  what  dam- 
age must  they  not  do  to  the  crops  in  the  dis- 
trict? Men  said  that  they  did  a  very  great 


146          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

deal  of  damage,  and  it  was  hard  to  keep  their 
noses  out  of  anything  they  took  a  fancy  to. 
On  the  evening  of  the  Englishman's  visit,  the 
Maharaja  went  out,  as  is  his  laudable  custom, 
alone  and  unattended,  to  a  road  actually  in 
the  city  along  which  one  specially  big  pig  was 
in  the  habit  of  passing.  His  Highness  got  his 
game  with  a  single  shot  behind  the  shoulder, 
and  in  a  few  days  it  will  be  pickled  and  sent 
off  to  the  Maharana  of  Udaipur,  as  a  love-gift, 
on  account  of  the  latter's  investure.  There 
is  great  friendship  between  Jodhpur  and  Udai- 
pur, and  the  idea  of  one  King  going  abroad 
to  shoot  game  for  another  has  something  very 
pretty  and  quaint  in  it. 

Night  fell  and  the  Englishman  became  aware 
that  the  conservancy  of  Jodhpur  might  be 
vastly  improved.  Strong  stenches,  say  the 
doctors,  are  of  no  importance;  but  there  came 
upon  every  breath  of  heated  air — and  in  Jodh- 
pur City  the  air  is  warm  in  mid-winter — the 
faint,  sweet,  sickly  reek  that  one  has  always 
been  taught  to  consider  specially  deadly.  A 
few  months  ago  there  was  an  impressive  out- 
break of  cholera  in  Jodhpur,  and  the  Resi- 
dency Doctor,  who  really  hoped  that  the  peo- 
ple would  be  brought  to  see  sense,  did  his  best 
to  bring  forward  a  general  cleansing-scheme. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  147 

But  the  city  fathers  would  have  none  of  it. 
Their  fathers  had  been  trying  to  poison  them- 
selves in  well-defined  ways  for  an  indefinite 
number  of  years;  and  they  were  not  going  to 
hare  any  of  the  Sahib's  "sweeper  nonsense." 

To  clinch  everything,  one  travelled  member 
of  the  community  rose  in  his  place  and  said  :— 
"Why,  I've  been  to  Simla.  Yes,  to  Simla! 
And  even  I  don't  want  it!"  This  compliment 
should  be  engrossed  in  the  archives  of  the 
Simla  Municipality.  Sanitation  on  English 
lines  is  not  yet  acceptable  to  Jodhpur. 

When  the  black  dusk  had  shut  down,  the 
Englishman  climbed  up  a  little  hill  and  saw 
the  stars  come  out  and  shine  over  the  desert. 
Very  far  away,  some  camel-drivers  had  lighted 
a  fire  and  were  singing  as  they  sat  by  the  side 
of  their  beasts.  Sound  travels  as  far  over  sand 
as  over  water,  and  their  voices  came  into  the 
city  wall  and  beat  against  it  in  multiplied 
echoes. 

Then  he  returned  to  the  House  of  Strange 
Stories — the  Dak-Bungalow — and  passed  the 
time  o'day  to  the  genial,  light-hearted  bagman 
— a  Cockney,  in  whose  heart  there  was  no 
thought  of  India,  though  he  had  travelled  for 
years  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  Empire  and  over  New  Burma  as  well. 


I4&          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

There  was  a  fort  in  Jodhpur,  but  you  see  that 
was  not  in  his  line  of  business  exactly,  and 
there  were  stables,  but  "you  may  take  my  word 
for  it,  them  who  has  much  to  do  with  horses 
is  a  bad  lot.  You  get  hold  of  the  Maharaja's 
coachman  and  he'll  drive  you  all  round  th: 
shop.  I'm  only  waiting  here  collecting 
money."  Jodhpur  dak-bungalow  seems  to  be 
full  of  men  "waiting  here."  They  lie  in  long 
chairs  in  the  verandah  and  tell  each  other  in- 
terminable stories,  or  stare  citywards  and  ex- 
press their  opinion  of  some  dilatory  debtor  in 
language  punctuated  by  free  spitting.  They 
are  all  waiting  for  something;  and  they  vary 
the  monotony  of  a  life  they  make  wilfully  dull 
beyond  words,  by  waging  war  with  the  dak- 
bungalow  khansama.  Then  they  return  to 
their  long  chairs,  or  their  couches,  and  sleep. 
Some  of  them,  in  old  days,  used  to  wait  as 
long  as  six  weeks — six  weeks  in  May,  when  the 
sixty  miles  from  Marwar  Junction  to  Jodhpur 
was  covered  in  three  days  by  slow-pacing  bul- 
lock carts!  Some  of  them  are  bagmen,  able 
to  describe  the  demerits  of  every  dak-bungalow 
from  the  Peshin  to  Pagan,  and  southward  to 
Hyderabad — men  of  substance  who  have  "The 
Trades"  at  their  back.  It  is  a  terrible  thing 
to  be  in  "The  Trades,"  that  great  Doomsday 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  149 

Book  of  Calcutta,  in  whose  pages  are  written 
the  names  of  doubtful  debtors.  Let  light- 
hearted  purchasers  take  note. 

And  others,  who  wait  and  swear  and  spit 
and  exchange  anecdotes — what  are  they  ?  Bum- 
mers, land-sharks,  skirmishers  for  their  bread. 
It  would  be  cruel  in  a  fellow-tramp  to  call  them 
loafers.  Their  lien  upon  the  State  may  have 
its  origin  in  horses,  or  anything  else;  for  the 
State  buys  anything  vendible,  from  Abdul  Ray- 
mon's  most  promising  importation  to — a  pat- 
ent, self-acting  corkscrew.  They  are  a  mixed 
crew,  but  amusing  and  full  of  strange  stories 
of  adventure  by  land  and  by  sea.  And  their 
ends  are  as  curiously  brutal  as  their  lives.  A 
wanderer  was  once  swept  into  the  great,  still 
backwater  that  divides  the  loaferdom  of  Upper 
India — that  is  to  say,  Calcutta  and  Bombay — 
from  the  north-going  current  of  Madras,  where 
Nym  and  Pistol  are  highly  finished  articles 
with  certificates.  This  backwater  is  a  danger- 
ous place  to  break  down  in,  as  the  men  on  the 
road  know  well.  "You  can  run  Rajputana  in 
a  pair  o'  sack  breeches  an'  an  old  hat,  but  go 
to  Central  Injia  with  pice,"  says  the  wisdom  of 
the  road.  So  the  waif  died  in  the  bazaar,  and 
the  Barrack-master  Sahib  gave  orders  for  his 
burial.  It  might  have  been  the  bazaar  sergeant, 


150          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

or  it  might  have  been  a  hireling  who  was 
charged  with  the  disposal  of  the  body.  At 
any  rate,  it  was  an  Irishman  who  said  to  the 
Barrack-master  Sahib: — "Fwhat  about  that 
loafer?"  "Well,  what's  the  matter?"  "I'm 
considtherin  whether  I'm  to  smash  in  his 
thick  head,  or  to  break  his  long  legs.  He 
won't  fit  the  storecoffm  anyways." 

Here  the  story  ends.  It  may  be  an  old  one ; 
but  it  struck  the  Englishman  as  being  rather 
unsympathetic  in  its  nature;  and  he  has  pre- 
served it  for  this  reason.  Were  the  English- 
man a  mere  Secretary  of  State  instead  of  an 
enviable  and  unshackled  vagabond,  he  would 
remodel  that  Philanthropic  Institution  for 
Teaching  Young  Subalterns  how  to  Spell — 
variously  called  the  Intelligence  and  the  Po- 
litical Department — and  giving  each  omedwar 
the  pair  of  sack  breeches  and  old  hat,  above 
prescribed,  would  send  him  out  for  a  twelve- 
month on  the  road.  Not  that  he  might  learn 
to  swear  Australian  oaths  (which  are  superior 
to  any  ones  in  the  market)  or  to  drink  bazaar 
drinks  (which  are  very  bad  indeed),  but  in 
order  that  he  might  gain  an  insight  into  the 
tertiary  politics  of  States — things  less  impos- 
ing than  succession-cases  and  less  wearisome 
than  boundary  disputes,  but — here  speaks  Ferd- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  151 

inand  Count  Fathom,  in  an  Intermediate  com- 
partment, very  drunk  and  very  happy — < 
''Worth  knowing  a  little — Oh  no !  Not  at  all." 
A  small  volume  might  be  written  of  the 
ways  and  the  tales  of  Indian  loafers  of  the 
more  brilliant  order — such  Chevaliers  of  the 
Order  of  Industry  as  would  throw  their  glasses 
in  your  face  did  you  call  them  loafers.  They 
are  a  genial,  blasphemous,  blustering  crew, 
and  pre-eminent  even  in  a  land  of  liars. 


XIII. 


A  King's  House  and  Country.     Further  Con- 
sideration of  the  Hat-marked  Caste. 

THE  hospitality  that  spreads  tables  in  the 
wilderness,  and  shifts  the  stranger  from 
the  back  of  a  hired  camel  into  the  two-horse 
victoria,  must  be  experienced  to  be  appreciated. 

To  those  unacquainted  with  the  peculiari- 
ties of  the  native-trained  horse,  this  advice 
may  be  worth  something.  Sit  as  far  back  as 
ever  you  can,  and,  if  Oriental  courtesy  have 
put  an  English  bit  and  bridoon  in  a  mouth  by 
education  intended  for  a  spiked  curb,  leave  the 
whole  contraption  alone.  Once  acquainted  with 
the  comparative  smoothness  of  English  iron- 
mongery, your  mount  will  grow  frivolous.  In 
which  event  a  four-pound  steeplechase  saddle, 
accepted  through  sheer  shame,  offers  the  very 
smallest  amount  of  purchase  to  untrained  legs. 

The  Englishman  rode  up  to  the  Fort,  and  by 
rhe  way  learnt  all  these  things  and  many  more. 
He  was  provided  with  a  racking,  female  horse 
who  swept  the  gullies  of  the  city  by  dancing 
sideways. 


153 

The  road  to  the  Fort  which  stands  on  the 
Hill  of  Strife  wound  in  and  out  of  sixty-foot 
hills,  with  a  skilful  avoidance  of  all  shade;  and 
this  was  at  high  noon,  when  puffs  of  heated  air 
blew  from  the  rocks  on  all  sides.  "What  must 
the  heat  be  in  May?"  The  Englishman's  com- 
panion was  a  cheery  Brahmin,  who  wore  the 
lightest  of  turbans  and  sat  the  smallest  of  neat 
little  country-breds.  "Awful!"  said  the  Brah- 
min. "But  not  so  bad  as  in  the  district.  Look 
there !"  and  he  pointed  from  the  brow  of  a  bad 
eminence,  across  the  quivering  heat-haze,  to 
where  the  white  sand  faded  into  bleach  blue 
sky,  and  the  horizon  was  shaken  and  tremulous. 
"It's  very  bad  in  summer.  Would  knock  you — 
Oh  yes —  all  to  smash,  but  we  are  accustomed 
to  it."  A  rock-strewn  hill,  about  half  a  mile, 
as  the  crow  flies,  from  the  Fort  was  pointed  out 
as  the  place  whence,  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century,  the  Pretender  Sowae  besieged  Raja 
Maun  for  five  months,  but  could  make  no  head- 
way against  his  foe.  One  gun  of  the  enemy's 
batteries  specially  galled  the  Fort,  and  the 
Jodhpur  King  offered  a  village  to  any  of  his 
gunners  who  should  dismount  it.  "It  was 
smashed,"  said  the  Brahmin.  "Oh  yes,  all  to 
pieces."  Practically,  the  city  which  lies  below 
the  Fort  is  indefensible,  and  during  the  many 


154          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

wars  of  Marwar  has  generally  been  taken  up 
by  the  assailants  without  resistance. 

Entering  the  Fort  by  the  Jeypore  Gate,  and 
studiously  refraining  from  opening  his  um- 
brella, the  Englishman  found  shadow  and 
coolth,  took  off  his  hat  to  the  tun-bellied,  trunk- 
nosed  God  of  Good-Luck  who  had  been  very 
kind  to  him  in  his  wanderings,  and  sat  down 
near  half-a-dozen  of  the  Maharaja's  guns  bear- 
ing the  mark,  "A.  Broome,  Cossipore,  1857," 
or  "G.  Hutchinson,  Cossipore,  1838."  Now 
rock  and  masonry  are  so  curiously  blended  in 
this  great  pile  that  he  who  walks  through  it 
loses  sense  of  being  among  buildings.  It  is  as 
though  he  walked  through  mountain-gorges. 
The  stone-paved,  inclined  planes,  and  the  tun- 
nel-like passages  driven  under  a  hundred  feet 
height  of  buildings,  increase  this  impression. 
In  many  places  the  wall  and  rock  runs  up  un- 
broken by  any  window  for  forty  feet. 

It  would  be  a  week's  work  to  pick  out  even 
roughly  the  names  of  the  dead  who  have  added 
to  the  buildings,  or  to  describe  the  bewildering 
multiplicity  of  courts  and  ranges  of  rooms; 
and,  in  the  end,  the  result  would  be  as  satisfac- 
tory as  an  attempt  to  describe  a  night-mare.  It 
is  said  that  the  rock  on  which  the  Fort  stands 
is  four  miles  in  circuit,  but  no  man  yet  has 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          155 

dared  to  estimate  the  size  of  the  city  that  they 
call  the  Palace,  or  the  mileage  of  its  ways. 
Ever  since  Ras  Joda,  four  hundred  years  ago, 
listened  to  the  voice  of  a  Fogi  and  leaving 
Mundore  built  his  eyrie  on  the  "Bird's  Nest," 
as  the  Hill  of  Strife  was  called,  the  Palaces 
have  grown  and  thickened.  Even  to-day  the 
builders  are  still  at  work.  Takht  Singh,  the 
present  ruler's  predecessor,  built  royally.  An 
incomplete  bastion  and  a  Hall  of  Flowers  are 
among  the  works  of  his  pleasure.  Hidden 
away  behind  a  mighty  wing  of  carved  red  sand- 
stone, lie  rooms  set  apart  for  Viceroys,  Dur- 
bar Halls,  and  dinner-rooms  without  end.  A 
gentle  gloom  covers  the  evidences  of  the  cath- 
olic taste  of  the  State  in  articles  of  "bigotry 
and  virtue";  but  there  is  enough  light  to  show 
the  raison  d'etre  of  the  men  who  wait  in  the 
dak-bungalow.  And,  after  all,  what  is  the  use 
of  Royalty  in  these  days  if  a  man  may  not  take 
delight  in  the  pride  of  the  eye  ?  Kumbha  Rana, 
the  great  man  of  Chitor,  fought  like  a  Rajput, 
but  he  had  an  instinct  which  made  him  build 
the  Tower  of  Victory  at,  who  knows,  what  cost 
of  money  and  life.  The  fighting-instinct 
thrown  back  upon  itself,  must  have  some  sort 
of  outlet;  and  a  merciful  Providence  wisely 
ordains  that  the  Kings  of  the  East  in  the  nine- 


156  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

teenth  century  shall  take  pleasure  in  "shopping" 
on  an  imperial  scale.  Dresden  china  snuff- 
boxes, mechanical  engines,  electroplated  fish- 
slicers,  musical  boxes,  and  gilt,  blownglass, 
Christmas-Tree  balls  do  not  go  well  with  the 
splendours  of  a  Palace  that  might  have  been 
built  by  Titans  and  coloured  by  the  morning 
sun.  But  there  are  excuses  to  be  made  for 
Kings  who  have  no  work  to  do — at  least  such 
work  as  their  fathers  understood  best. 

In  one  of  the  higher  bastions  stands  a  curious 
specimen  of  one  of  the  earliest  mitrailleuses — a 
cumbrous  machine  carrying  twenty  gun-barrels 
in  two  rows,  which  small-arm  fire  is  flanked  by 
two  tiny  cannon.  As  a  muzzle-loading  imple- 
ment its  value  after  the  first  discharge  would 
be  insignificant;  but  the  soldiers  lounging  by 
assured  the  Englishman  that  it  had  done  good 
service  in  its  time :  it  was  eaten  with  rust. 

A  man  may  spend  a  long  hour  in  the  upper 
tiers  of  the  Palaces,  but  still  far  from  the  roof- 
tops, in  looking  out  across  the  desert.  There 
are  Englishmen  in  these  wastes,  who  say 
gravely  that  there  is  nothing  so  fascinating  as 
the  sand  of  Bikanir  and  Marwar.  "You  see," 
explained  an  enthusiast  of  the  Hat-marked 
Caste,  "you  are  not  shut  in  by  roads,  and  you 
can  go  just  as  you  please.  And,  somehow,  it 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  157 

grows  upon  you  as  you  get  used  to  it,  and  you 
end,  y'know,  by  falling  in  love  with  the  place." 
Look  steadily  from  the  Palace  westward  where 
the  city  with  its  tanks  and  serais  is  spread  at 
your  feet,  and  you  will,  in  a  lame  way,  begin 
to  understand  the  fascination  of  the  desert 
which,  by  those  who  have  felt  it,  is  said  to  be 
even  stronger  than  the  fascination  of  the  road. 
The  city  is  of  red-sandstone  and  dull  and 
sombre  to  look  at.  Beyond  it,  where  the  white 
sand  lies,  the  country  is  dotted  with  camels 
limping  into  the  Eiwigkeit  or  coming  from  the 
same  place.  Trees  appear  to  be  strictly  con- 
fined to  the  suburbs  of  the  city.  Very  good. 
If  you  look  long  enough  across  the  sands,  while 
a  voice  in  your  ear  is  telling  you  of  half-buried 
cities,  old  as  old  Time  and  wholly  unvisited  by 
Sahibs,  of  districts  where  the  white  man  is  un- 
known, and  of  the  wonders  of  far-away  Jey- 
sulmir  ruled  by  a  half  distraught  king,  sand- 
locked  and  now  smitten  by  a  terrible  food  and 
water  famine,  you  will,  if  it  happen  that  you 
are  of  a  sedentary  and  civilised  nature,  ex- 
perience a  new  emotion — will  be  conscious  of 
a  great  desire  to  take  one  of  the  lobbing  camels 
and  get  away  into  the  desert,  away  from  the 
last  touch  of  To-day,  to  meet  the  Past  face  to 
face.  Some  day  a  novelist  will  exploit  the  un- 


158  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

known  land  from  the  Rann,  where  the  wild  ass 
breeds,  northward  and  eastward,  till  he  comes 
to  the  Indus.  That  will  be  when  Rider  Hag- 
gard has  used  up  Africa  and  a  new  "She"  is 
needed. 

But  the  officials  of  Marwar  do  not  call  their 
country  a  desert.     On  the  contrary,  they  ad- 
minister it  very  scientifically  and  raise,  as  has 
been  said,  about  thirty-eight  lakhs  from  it.    To 
come  back  from  the  influence  and  the  possible 
use  of  the  desert  to  more  prosaic  facts.     Read 
quickly  a  rough  record  of  things  in  modern 
Marwar.    The  old  is  drawn  in  Tod,  who  speaks 
the  truth.     The  Maharaja's  right-hand  in  the 
work  of  the  State  is  Maharaj  Sir  Pertab  Singh, 
Prime   Minister,    A.-D.-C.    to   the    Prince   of 
Wales,  capable  of  managing  the  Marwari  who 
intrigues  like  a — Marwari,  equally  capable,  as 
has  been  seen,  of  moving  in  London  Society, 
and  Colonel  of  a  newly-raised  "crack"  cavalry 
corps.     The  Englishman  would  have  liked  to 
have  seen  him,  but  he  was  away  in  the  desert 
somewhere,  either  marking  a  boundary  or  look- 
ing after  a  succession  case.    Not  very  long  ago, 
as  the  Setts  of  Ajmir  knew  well,  there  was  a 
State  debt  of  fifty  lakhs.     This  has  now  been 
changed  into  a  surplus  of  three  lakhs,  and  the 
revenue  is  growing.     Also,  the  simple  Dacoit 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  159 

who  used  to  enjoy  himself  very  pleasantly,  has 
been  put  into  a  department,  and  the  Thug  with 
him. 

Consequently,  for  the  department  takes  a 
genuine  interest  in  this  form  of  shikar,  and  the 
gaol  leg-irons  are  not  too  light,  dacoities  have 
been  reduced  to  such  an  extent  that  men  say 
"you  may  send  a  woman,  with  her  ornaments 
upon  her,  from  Sojat  to  Phalodi,  and  she  will 
not  lose  a  nose-ring."  Also,  and  this  in  a  Raj- 
put State  is  an  important  matter,  the  boundaries 
of  nearly  every  village  in  Marwar  have  been 
demarcated,  and  boundary  rixes,  in  which  both 
sides  preferred  small-arm  fire  to  the  regulation 
lathi,  are  unknown.  The  open-handed  system 
of  giving  away  villages  had  raised  a  large  and 
unmannerly  crop  of  jaghirdars.  These  have 
been  taken  and  brought  in  hand  by  Sir  Pertab 
Singh,  to  the  better  order  of  the  State. 

A  Punjabi  Sirdar,  Har  Dyal  Singh,  has  re- 
formed, or  made  rather,  Courts  on  the  Civil 
and  Criminal  Side;  and  his  hand  is  said  to  b* 
found  in  a  good  many  sweepings  out  of  old 
corners.  It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that 
everything  that  has  been  done,  was  carried 
through  over  and  under  unlimited  intrigue,  for 
Jodhpur  is  a  Native  State.  Intrigue  must  be 
<aiet  with  intrigue  by  all  except  Gordons  or 


160  LETTERS  OF  :>IARQUE 

demi-gods;  and  it  is  curious  to  hear  how  a  re- 
duction in  tariff,  or  a  smoothing  out  of  some 
tangled  Court  had  to  be  worked  by  shift  and 
by-way.  The  tales  are  comic,  but  not  for  pub- 
lication. Howbeit!  Har  Dayal  Singh  got  his 
training  in  part  under  the  Punjab  Government, 
and  in  part  in  a  little  Native  State  far  away  in 
the  Himalayas,  where  the  giimnameh  was  not 
altogether  an  unknown  animal.  To  the  credit 
of  the  ''Pauper  Province"  be  it  said,  it  is  not 
easy  to  circumvent  a  Punjabi.  The  details  of 
his  work  would  be  dry  reading.  The  result  of 
it  is  good,  and  there  is  justice  in  Marwar,  and 
order  and  firmness  in  its  administration. 

Naturally,  the  land-revenue  is  the  most  in- 
teresting thing  in  Marwar  from  an  adminis- 
trative point  of  view.  The  basis  of  it  is  a  tank 
about  the  size  of  a  swimming-bath,  with  a 
catchment  of  several  hundred  square  yards, 
draining  through  leeped  channels.  When  God 
sends  the  rain,  the  people  of  the  village  drink 
from  the  tank.  When  the  rains  fail,  as  they 
failed  this  year,  they  take  to  their  wells,  which 
are  brackish  and  breed  guinea-worm.  For 
these  reasons  the  revenue,  like  the  Republic  of 
San  Domingo,  is  never  alike  for  two  years  run- 
ning. There  are  no  canal  questions  to  harry 
the  authorities;  but  the  fluctuations  are  enor- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  161 

mous.  Under  the  Aravalis  the  soil  is  good: 
further  north  they  grow  millet  and  pasture  cat- 
tle, though,  said  a  Revenue  Officer  cheerfully : 
— "God  knows  what  the  brutes  find  to  eat." 
Apropos  of  irrigation,  the  one  canal  deserves 
special  mention,  as  showing  how  George 
Stephenson  came  to  Jodhpur  and  astonished 
the  inhabitants.  Six  miles  from  the  city  proper 
lies  the  Balsamand  Sagar,  a  great  tank.  In  the 
hot  weather,  when  the  city  tanks  ran  out  or 
stank,  it  was  the  pleasant  duty  of  the  women  to 
tramp  twelve  miles  at  the  end  of  the  day's  work 
to  fill  their  lotahs.  In  the  hot  weather  Jodhpur 
is — let  a  similie  suffice.  Sukkur  in  June  would 
be  Simla  to  Jodhpur. 

The  State  Engineer,  who  is  also  the  Jodhpur 
State  Line,  for  he  has  no  European  subordi- 
nates, conceived  the  idea  of  bringing  the  water 
from  the  Balsamand  into  the  city.  Was  the 
city  grateful?  Not  in  the  least.  It  said  that 
the  Sahib  wanted  the  water  to  run  uphill  and 
was  throwing  money  into  the  tank.  Being  true 
Marwaris,  men  betted  on  the  subject.  The 
canal — a  built  out  one,  for  water  must  not 
touch  earth  in  these  parts — was  made  at  a  cost 
of  something  over  a  lakh,  and  the  water  came 
down  because  the  tank  was  a  trifle  higher  than 
the  city.  Now,  in  the  hot  weather,  the  women 


1 62  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

need  not  go  for  long  walks,  but  the  Marwari 
cannot  understand  how  it  was  that  the  "waters 
came  down  to  Jodhpur."  From  the  Marwari 
to  money  matters  is  an  easy  step.  Formerly, 
that  is  to  say  up  to  within  a  very  short  time,  the 
Treasury  of  Jodhpur  was  conducted  in  a  shift- 
less, happy-go-lucky  sort  of  fashion  not  uncom- 
mon in  Native  States,  whereby  the  Mahajuns 
"held  the  bag"  and  made  unholy  profits  on  dis- 
count and  other  things,  to  the  confusion  of  the 
Durbar  Funds  and  their  own  enrichment. 
There  is  now  a  Treasury  modelled  on  English 
lines,  and  English  in  the  important  particular 
that  money  is  not  to  be  got  from  it  for  the  ask- 
ing, and  the  items  of  expenditure  are  strictly 
looked  after. 

In  the  middle  of  all  this  bustle  of  reform 
planned,  achieved,  frustrated  and  re-planned, 
and  the  never-ending  underground  warfare 
that  surges  in  a  Native  State,  moved  the  Eng- 
lish officers — the  irreducible  minimum  of 
exiles.  As  a  caste,  the  working  Englishmen  in 
Native  States  are  curiously  interesting ;  and  the 
traveller  whose  tact  by  this  time  has  been  Wil- 
fred-blunted by  tramping,  sits  in  judgment 
upon  them  as  he  has  seen  them.  In  the  first 
place,  they  are,  they  must  be,  the  fittest  who 
have  survived ;  for  though,  here  and  there,  you 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  163 

shall  find  one  chafing  bitterly  against  the  bur- 
den of  his  life  in  the  wilderness,  one  to  be  pitied 
more  than  any  chained  beast,  the  bulk  of  the 
caste  are  honestly  and  unaffectedly  fond  of 
their  work,  fond  of  the  country  around  them, 
and  fond  of  the  people  they  deal  with.  In  each 
State  their  answer  to  a  certain  question  is  the 
same.  The  men  with  whom  they  are  in  con- 
tact are  "all  right  when  you  know  them,  but 
you've  got  to  know  them  first"  as  the  music- 
hall  song  says.  Their  hands  are  full  of  work; 
so  full  that,  when  the  incult  wanderer  said — 
"\Yhat  do  you  find  to  do?"  they  looked  upon 
him  with  contempt  and  amazement — exactly  as 
the  wanderer  himself  had  once  looked  upon  a 
Globe-Trotter  who  had  put  to  him  the  same 
impertinent  query.  And — but  here  the  Eng- 
lishman may  be  wrong — it  seemed  to  him  that 
in  one  respect  their  lives  were  a  good  deal  more 
restful  and  concentrated  than  those  of  their 
brethren  under  the  British  Government.  There 
w^s  no  talk  of  shiftings  and  transfers  and  pro- 
motions, stretching  across  a  Province  and  a 
half,  and  no  man  said  anything  about  Simla. 
To  one  who  has  hitherto  believed  that  Simla  is 
the  hub  of  the  Empire,  it  is  disconcerting  to 
hear : — "O  Simla !  That's  where  you  Bengalis 
go.  We  haven't  anything  to  do  with  Simla 


164          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

down  here."  And  no  more  they  have.  Their 
talk  and  their  interests  run  in  the  boundaries  of 
the  States  they  serve,  and,  most  striking  of  all, 
the  gossipy  element  seems  to  be  cut  out  al- 
together. It  is  a  backwater  of  the  river  of 
Anglo-Indian  life — or  is  it  the  main  current, 
the  broad  stream  that  supplies  the  motive 
power,  and  is  the  other  life  only  the  noisy 
ripple  on  the  surface?  You  who  have  lived, 
not  merely  looked  at,  both  lives,  decide.  Much 
can  be  learnt  from  the  talk  of  the  caste — many 
curious,  many  amusing,  and  some  startling 
things.  One  hears  stories  of  men  who  take  a 
poor,  impoverished  State  as  a  man  takes  a  wife, 
"for  better  or  worse,"  and,  moved  by  some  in- 
comprehensible ideal  of  virtue,  consecrate — 
that  is  not  too  big  a  word — consecrate  their 
lives  to  that  State  in  all  single-heartedness  and 
purity.  Such  men  are  few,  but  they  exist  to- 
day, and  their  names  are  great  in  lands  where 
no  Englishman  travels.  Again  the  listener 
hears  tales  of  grizzled  diplomats  of  Rajputana 
— Machiavellis  who  have  hoisted  a  powerful 
intriguer  with  his  own  intrigue,  and  bested 
priestly  cunning,  and  the  guile  of  the  Oswal, 
simply  that  the  way  might  be  clear  for  some 
scheme  which  should  put  money  into  a  totter- 
ing Treasury,  or  lighten  the  taxation  of  a  few 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  165 

hundred  thousand  men — or  both;  for  this  can 
be  done.  One  tithe  of  that  force  spent  on  their 
own  advancement  would  have  carried  such  men 
very  far. 

Those  who  know  anything  of  the  internals  of 
government,  know  that  such  men  must  exist, 
for  their  works  are  written  between  the  lines 
of  the  Administration  Reports;  but  to  hear 
about  them  and  to  have  them  pointed  out,  is 
quite  a  different  thing.  It  breeds  respect  and  a 
sense  of  shame  and  frivolity  in  the  mind  of  the 
mere  looker-on,  which  may  be  good  for  the 
soul. 

Truly  the  Hat-marked  Caste  are  a  strange 
people.  They  are  so  few  and  so  lonely  and  so 
strong.  They  can  sit  down  in  one  place  for 
years,  and  see  the  works  of  their  hands  and  the 
promptings  of  their  brain  grow  to  actual  and 
beneficent  life,  bringing  good  to  thousands. 
Less  fettered  than  the  direct  servant  of  the  In- 
dian Government,  and  working  over  a  much 
vaster  charge,  they  seem  a  bigger  and  a  more 
large-minded  breed.  And  that  is  saying  a  good 
deal. 

But  let  the  others,  the  little  people  bound 
down  and  supervised,  and  strictly  limited  and 
income-taxed,  always  remember  that  the  Hat- 
marked  are  very  badly  off  for  shops.  If  they 


1 66  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

want  a  necktie  they  must  get  it  up  from  Bom- 
bay, and  in  the  rains  they  can  hardly  move 
about ;  and  they  have  no  amusements  and  must 
go  a  day's  railway  journey  for  a  rubber,  and 
their  drinking  water  is  doubtful;  and  there  is 
rather  less  than  one  lady  per  ten  thousand 
square  miles. 

After  all,  comparative  civilization  has  its  ad- 
vantages, 


XIV. 


Among  the  Honyhnhnms. 

JODHPUR  differs  from  the  other  States  of 
Rajputana  in  that  its  Royalty  are  peculiarly 
accessible  to  an  inquiring  public.  There  are 
wanderers,  the  desire  of  whose  life  it  is  "to 
see  Nabobs,"  which  is  the  Globe-Trotter's  title 
for  any  one  in  unusually  clean  clothes,  or  an 
Oudh  Taluqdar  in  gala  dress.  Men  asked  in 
Jodhpur  whether  the  Englishman  would  like  to 
see  His  Highness.  The  Englishman  had  a 
great  desire  to  do  so,  if  His  Highness  would  be 
in  no  way  inconvenienced.  Then  they  scoffed : 
— "Oh,  he  won't  durbar  you,  you  needn't  flatter 
yourself.  If  he's  in  the  humour  he'll  receive 
you  like  an  English  country-gentleman."  How 
in  the  world  could  the  owner  of  such  a  place  as 
Jodhpur  Palace  be  in  any  way  like  an  English 
country-gentleman?  The  Englishman  had  not 
long  to  wait  in  doubt.  His  Highness  intimated 
his  readiness  to  see  the  Englishman  between 
eight  and  nine  in  the  morning  at  the  Raika- 
Bagh.  The  Raika-Bagh  is  not  a  Palace,  for 


1 68  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

the  lower  storey  and  all  the  detached  buildings 
round  it  are  filled  with  horses.  Nor  can  it  in 
any  way  be  called  a  stable,  because  the  upper 
storey  contains  sumptuous  apartments  full  of 
all  manner  of  valuables  both  of  the  East  and 
the  West.  Nor  is  it  in  any  sense  a  pleasure- 
garden,  for  it  stands  on  soft  white  sand,  close 
to  a  multitude  of  litter  and  sand  training  tracks, 
and  is  devoid  of  trees  for  the  most  part. 
Therefore  the  Raika-Bagh  is  simply  the  Raika- 
Bagh  and  nothing  else.  It  is  now  the  chosen 
residence  of  the  Maharaja  who  loves  to  live 
among  his  four  hundred  or  more  horses.  All 
Jodhpur  is  horse-mad  by  the  way,  and  it  be- 
hooves any  one  who  wishes  to  be  any  one  to 
keep  his  own  race-course.  The  Englishman 
went  to  the  Raika-Bagh,  which  stands  half  a 
mile  or  so  from  the  city,  and  passing  through 
a  long  room  filled  with  saddles  by  the  dozen, 
bridles  by  the  score,  and  bits  by  the  hundred, 
was  aware  of  a  very  small  and  lively  little 
cherub  on  the  roof  of  a  garden-house.  He 
was  carefully  muffled,  for  the  morning  was 
chill.  "Good  morning,"  he  cried  cheerfully  in 
English,  waving  a  mittened  hand.  "Are  you 
going  to  see  my  faver  and  the  horses  ?"  It  was 
the  Maharaj  Kanwar,  the  Crown  Prince,  the 
apple  of  the  Maharaja's  eye,  and  one  of  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  169 

quaintest  little  bodies  that  ever  set  an  English- 
man disrespectfully  laughing.  He  studies  Eng- 
lish daily  with  one  of  the  English  officials  of 
the  State,  and  stands  a  very  good  chance  of 
being  thoroughly  spoiled,  for  he  is  a  general 
pet.  Also,  as  befits  his  dignity,  he  has  his  own 
carriage  or  carriages,  his  own  twelve-hand 
stable,  his  own  house  and  retinue,  and  every- 
thing handsome  about  him. 

A  few  steps  further  on,  in  a  little  enclosure 
in  front  of  a  small  two-storeyed  white  bunga- 
low, sat  His  Highness  the  Maharaja,  deep  in 
discussion  with  the  State  Engineer.  He  wore 
an  English  ulster,  and  within  ten  paces  of  him 
was  the  first  of  a  long  range  of  stalls.  There 
was  an  informality  of  procedure  about  Jodhpur 
which,  after  the  strained  etiquette  of  other 
States,  was  very  refreshing.  The  State  Engi- 
neer, who  has  a  growing  line  to  attend  to,  can- 
tered away,  and  His  Highness  after  a  few  in- 
troductory words,  knowing  what  the  English- 
man would  be  after,  said : — "Come  along,  and 
look  at  the  horses."  Other  formality  there  was 
absolutely  none.  Even  the  indispensable  knot 
of  hangers-on  stood  at  a  distance,  and  behind  a 
paling,  in  this  most  rustic  country  residence. 
A  well-bred  fox-terrier  took  command  of  the 
proceedings,  after  the  manner  of  dogs  all  the 


1 70  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

world  over,  and  the  Maharaja  led  to  the  horse- 
boxes. But  a  man  turned  up.  bending  under 
the  weight  of  much  bacon.  "Oh!  here's  the 
pig  I  shot  for  Udaipur  last  night.  You  see  that 
is  the  best  piece.  It's  pickled,  and  that's  what 
makes  it  yellow  to  look  at."  He  patted  the 
great  side  that  was  held  up.  "There  will  be  a 
camel  sowar  to  meet  it  half  way  to  Udaipur; 
and  I  hope  Udaipur  will  be  pleased  with  it.  It 
was  a  very  big  pig."  "And  where  did  you 
shoot  it,  Maharaja  Sahib?"  "Here,"  said  His 
Highness,  smiting  himself  high  up  under  the 
armpit.  "Where  else  would  you  have  it?" 
Certainly  this  descendant  of  Raja  Maun  was 
more  like  an  English  country-gentleman  than 
the  Englishman  in  his  ignorance  had  deemed 
possible.  He  led  on  from  horse-box  to  horse- 
box, the  terrier  at  his  heels,  pointing  out  each 
horse  of  note;  and  Jodhpur  has  many. 
"There's  Raja,  twice  winner  of  the  Civil  Ser- 
vice Cup."  The  Englishman  looked  reverently, 
and  Raja  rewarded  his  curiosity  with  a  vicious 
snap,  for  he  was  being  dressed  over,  and  his 
temper  was  out  of  joint.  Close  to  him  stood 
Autocrat,  the  grey  with  the  nutmeg  marks  on 
the  off-shoulder,  a  picture  of  a  horse,  also  dis- 
turbed in  his  mind.  Next  to  him  was  a  chest- 
nut Arab,  a  hopeless  cripple,  for  one  of  his 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  171 

knees  had  been  smashed  and  the  leg  was 
doubled  up  under  him.  It  was  Turquoise,  who, 
six  or  eight  years  ago,  rewarded  good  feeding 
by  getting  away  from  his  sais,  falling  down 
and  ruining  himself,  but  who,  none  the  less,  has 
lived  an  honoured  pensioner  on  the  Maharaja's 
bounty  ever  since.  No  horses  are  shot  in  the 
Jodhpur  stables,  and  when  one  dies — they  have 
lost  not  more  than  twenty-five  in  six  years — 
his  funeral  is  an  event.  He  is  wrapped  in  a 
white  sheet  which  is  strewn  with  flowers,  and, 
amid  the  weeping  of  the  saises,  is  borne  away 
to  the  burial  ground. 

After  doing  the  honours  for  nearly  half  an 
hour  the  Maharaja  departed,  and  as  the  Eng- 
lishman had  not  seen  more  than  forty  horses, 
he  felt  justified  in  demanding  more.  And  he 
got  them.  Eclipse  and  Young  Revenge  were 
out  down-country,  but  Sherwood,  at  the  stud, 
Shere  AH,  Conqueror,  Tynedale,  Sherwood  II., 
a  maiden  of  Abdul  Rahman's,  and  many  others 
of  note,  were  in,  and  were  brought  out. 
Among  the  veterans,  a  wrathful,  rampant,  red 
horse  still,  came  Brian  Boru,  whose  name  has 
been  written  large  in  the  chronicles  of  the  In- 
dian turf,  jerking  his  sais  across  the  road.  His 
near  fore  is  altogether  gone,  but  as  a  pensioner 
he  condescends  to  go  in  harness,  and  is  then 


f;2  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

said  to  be  a  "handful."     He  certainly  looks  it. 

At  the  two  hundred  and  fifty-seventh  horse, 
and  perhaps  the  twentieth  block  of  stables,  the 
Englishman's  brain  began  to  reel,  and  he  de- 
manded rest  and  information  on  a  certain  point. 
He  had  gone  into  some  fifty  stalls,  and  looked 
into  all  the  rest,  and  in  the  looking  had  search- 
ingly  sniffed.  But,  as  truly  as  he  was  then 
standing  far  below  Brian  Bom's  bony  withers, 
never  the  ghost  of  a  stench  had  polluted  the 
keen  morning  air.  The  City  of  the  Houyhn- 
hnms  was  specklessly  clean — cleaner  than  any 
stable,  racing  or  private,  that  he  had  been  into. 
How  was  it  done?  The  pure  white  sand  ac- 
counted for  a  good  deal,  and  the  rest  was  ex- 
plained by  one  of  the  Masters  of  Horse: — 
"Each  horse  has  one  sais  at  least — old  Ring- 
wood  he  had  four — and  we  make  'em  work. 
If  we  didn't  we'd  be  mucked  up  to  the  horses' 
bellies  in  no  time.  Everything  is  cleaned  off  at 
once;  and  whenever  the  sand's  tainted  it's  re- 
newed. There's  quite  enough  sand  you  see 
hereabouts.  Of  course  we  can't  keep  their 
coats  so  good  as  in  other  stables,  by  reason  of 
the  rolling;  but  we  can  keep  'em  pretty  clean." 

To  the  eye  of  one  who  knew  less  than  noth- 
ing about  horse-flesh,  this  immaculate  purity 
was  very  striking,  and  quite  as  impressive  was 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  173 

the  condition  of  the  horses,  which  was  English 
— quite  English.  Naturally,  none  of  them 
were  in  any  sort  of  training  beyond  daily  ex- 
ercise, but  they  were  fit  and  in  such  thoroughly 
good  fettle.  Many  of  them  were  out  on  the 
various  tracks,  and  many  were  coming  in. 
Roughly,  two  hundred  go  out  of  a  morning, 
and  it  is  to  be  feared,  learn  from  the  heavy 
going  of  the  Jodhpur  courses  how  to  hang  in 
their  stride.  This  is  a  matter  for  those  who 
know,  but  it  struck  the  Englishman  that  a  good 
deal  of  the  unsatisfactory  performances  of  the 
Jodhpur  stables  might  be  accounted  for  by  their 
having  lost  the  clean  stride  on  the  sand,  an  ; 
having  to  pick  it  up  gradually  on  the  less  hold- 
ing down-country  courses  —  unfortunately 
when  they  were  not  doing  training  gallops, 
but  the  real  thing.  This  small  theory  is  given 
for  instant  contradiction  by  those  who  under- 
stand. 

It  was  pleasant  to  sit  down  and  watch  the 
rush  of  the  horses  through  the  great  opening — 
gates  are  not  affected — going  on  to  the  coun- 
try-side where  they  take  the  air.  Here  a 
boisterous,  unschooled  Arab  shot  out  across 
the  road  and  cried  "Ha !  Ha !"  in  the  scriptural 
manner,  before  trying  to  rid  himself  of  the 
grinning  black  imp  on  his  back.  Behind  him 


174          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

a  Cabuli — surely  all  Cabulis  must  have  been 
born  with  Pelhams  in  their  mouths — bored 
sulkily  across  the  road,  or  threw  himself  across 
the  path  of  a  tall,  mild-eyed  Kurnal-bred 
youngster,  whose  cocked  ears  and  swinging 
head  showed  that,  though  he  was  so  sedate,  he 
was  thoroughly  taking  in  his  surroundings, 
and  would  very  much  like  to  know  if  there 
were  anybody  better  than  himself  on  the  course 
that  morning.  Impetuous  as  a  school-boy  and 
irresponsible  as  a  monkey,  one  of  the  Prince's 
polo  ponies,  not  above  racing  in  his  own  set, 
would  answer  the  query  by  rioting  past  the 
pupil  of  Parrott,  the  monogram  on  his  body- 
cloth  flapping  free  in  the  wind,  and  his  head 
and  hogged  tail  in  the  elements,  as  Uncle  Re- 
mus hath  it.  The  youngster  would  swing  him- 
self round,  and  polka-mazurka  for  a  few  paces, 
till  his  attention  would  be  caught  by  some 
dainty  Child  of  the  Desert,  fresh  from  the 
Bombay  stables,  sweating  at  every  sound, 
backing  and  filling  like  a  rudderless  ship. 
Then,  thanking  his  stars  that  he  was  wiser 
than  some  people,  number  177  would  lob 
on  to  the  track  and  settle  down  to  his  spin 
like  the  gentleman  he  was.  Elsewhere,  the 
eye  fell  upon  a  cloud  of  nameless  ones,  pur- 
chases from  Abdul  Rahman,  whose  worth 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  175 

will  be  proved  next  hot  weather,  when  they 
are  seriously  taken  in  hand — skirmishing 
over  the  face  of  the  land  and  enjoying  them- 
selves immensely.  High  above  everything 
else,  like  a  collier  among  barges,  screaming 
shrilly,  a  black,  flamboyant  Marwari  stallion 
with  a  crest  like  the  crest  of  a  barb, 
barrel-bellied,  goose-rumped  and  river-maned, 
pranced  through  the  press,  while  the  slow-pac- 
ing waler  carriage-horses  eyed  him  with  deep 
disfavour,  and  the  Maharaj  Kanwar's  tiny 
mount  capered  under  his  pink,  roman  nose, 
kicking  up  as  much  dust  as  the  Foxhall  colt 
who  had  got  on  to  a  lovely  patch  of  sand  and 
was  dancing  a  saraband  in  it.  In  and  out  of 
the  tangle,  going  down  to  or  coming  back  from 
the  courses,  ran,  shuffled,  rocketed,  plunged, 
sulked  or  stampeded  countless  horses  of  all 
kinds,  shapes  and  descriptions — so  that  the  eye 
at  last  failed  to  see  what  they  were,  and  only 
retained  a  general  impression  of  a  whirl  of 
bays,  greys,  iron-greys,  and  chestnuts  with 
white  stockings,  some  as  good  as  could  be  de- 
sired, others  average,  but  not  one  distinctly 
bad. 

"We  have  no  downright  bad  'uns  in  this 
stable.  What's  the  use?"  said  the  Master  of 
Horse  calmly.  "They  are  all  good  beasts  and, 


176          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

one  with  another,  must  cost  more  than  a  thou- 
sand each.  This  year's  new  ones  bought  from 
Bombay  and  the  pick  of  our  own  studs,  are  a 
hundred  strong  about.  May  be  more.  Yes, 
they  look  all  right  enough;  but  you  can  never 
know  what  they  are  going  to  turn  out.  Live- 
stock is  very  uncertain."  "And  how  are  the 
stables  managed :  how  do  you  make  room  for 
the  fresh  stock  ?"  "Something  this  way.  Here 
are  all  the  new  ones  and  Parrott's  lot,  and  the 
English  colts  that  Maharaja  Pertab  Singh 
brought  out  with  him  from  Home.  Winterlake 
out  o'  Queen's  Consort,  that  chestnut  with  the 
two  white  stockings  you're  looking  at  now. 
Well,  next  hot  weather  we  shall  see  what 
they're  made  of  and  which  is  who.  There's  so 
many  that  the  trainer  hardly  knows  'em  one 
from  another  till  they  begin  to  be  a  good  deal 
forward.  Those  that  haven't  got  the  pace,  or 
that  the  Maharaja  don't  fancy,  they're  taken 
out  and  sold  for  what  they'll  bring.  The  man 
who  takes  the  horses  out  has  a  good  job  of  it. 
He  comes  back  and  says: — 'I  sold  such  and 
such  for  so  much,  and  here's  the  money!' 
That's  all.  Well,  our  rejections  are  worth  hav- 
ing. They  have  taken  prizes  at  the  Poona 
Horse  Show.  See  for  yourself.  Is  there  one 
of  those  there  that  you  wouldn't  be  glad  to  take 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  177 

for  a  hack,  and  look  well  after  too?  Only 
they're  no  use  to  us,  and  so  out  they  go  by  the 
score.  We've  got  sixty  riding-boys,  perhaps 
more,  and  they've  got  their  work  cut  out  to 
keep  them  all  going.  What  you've  seen  are 
only  the  stables.  We've  got  one  stud  at  Bellara, 
eighty  miles  out,  and  they  come  in  sometimes 
in  droves  of  three  and  four  hundred  from  the 
stud.  They  raise  Marwaris  there  too,  but  that's 
entirely  under  native  management.  We've  got 
nothing  to  do  with  that.  The  natives  reckon  a 
Marwari  the  best  country-bred  you  can  lay 
hands  on;  and  some  of  them  are  beauties! 
Crests  on  'em  like  the  top  of  a  wave.  Well 
there's  that  stud,  and  another  stud  and,  reckon- 
ing one  with  another,  I  should  say  the  Maha- 
raja has  nearer  twelve  hundred  than  a  thousand 
horses  of  his  own.  For  this  place  here,  two 
wagon-loads  of  grass  come  in  every  day  from 
Marwar  Junction.  Lord  knows  how  many 
saddles  and  bridles  we've  got.  I  never  counted. 
I  suppose  we've  about  forty  carriages,  not 
counting  the  ones  that  get  shabby  and  are 
stacked  in  places  in  the  city,  as  I  suppose  you've 
seen.  We  take  'em  out  in  the  morning,  a  reg- 
ular string  all  together,  brakes  and  all;  but 
the  prettiest  turn-out  we  ever  turned  out  was 
Lady  Dufferin's  pony  four-in-hand.  Walers— 


178  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

thirteen-two  the  wheelers  I  think,  and  thirteen- 
one  the  leaders.  They  took  prizes  at  Poona. 
That  was  a  pretty  turn-out.  The  prettiest  in 
India.  Lady  Dufferin,  she  drove  it  when  the 
Viceroy  was  down  here  last  year.  There  are 
bicycles  and  tricycles  in  the  carriage  department 
too.  I  don't  know  how  many,  but  when  the 
Viceroy's  camp  was  held,  there  was  about  one 
a-piece  for  the  gentlemen,  with  remounts. 
They're  somewhere  about  the  place  now,  if  you 
want  to  see  them.  How  do  we  manage  to  keep 
the  horses  so  quiet?  You'll  find  some  o'  the 
youngsters  play  the  goat  a  good  deal  when  they 
come  out  o'  stable,  but,  as  you  say,  there's  no 
vice  generally.  It's  this  way.  We  don't  allow 
any  curry-combs.  If  we  did,  the  saises  would 
be  wearing  out  their  brushes  on  the  combs.  It's 
all  elbow  grease  here.  They've  got  to  go  over 
the  horses  with  their  hands.  They  must  handle 
'em,  and  a  native  he's  afraid  of  a  horse.  Now 
an  English  groom,  when  the  horse  is  doing  the 
fool,  clips  him  over  the  head  with  a  curry-comb, 
or  punches  him  in  the  belly ;  and  that  hurts  the 
horse's  feelings.  A  native,  he  just  stands  back 
till  the  trouble  is  over.  He  must  handle  the 
horse  or  he'd  get  into  trouble  for  not  dressing 
him,  so  it  comes  to  all  handling  and  no  licking, 
and  that's  why  you  won't  get  hold  of  a  really 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  179 

vicious  brute  in  these  stables.  Old  Ringwood 
he  had  four  saises,  and  he  wanted  'em  every 
one,  but  the  other  horses  haven't  more  than  one 
sais  a-piece.  The  Maharaja  he  keeps  fourteen 
or  fifteen  horses  for  his  own  riding.  Not  that 
he  cares  to  ride  now,  but  he  likes  to  have  his 
horses;  and  no  one  else  can  touch  'em.  Then 
there's  the  horses  he  mounts  his  visitors  on, 
when  they  come  for  pig-sticking  and  such  like, 
and  then  there's  a  lot  of  horses  that  go  to 
Maharaja  Pertab  Singh's  new  cavalry  regi- 
ment. So  you  see  a  horse  can  go  through  all 
three  degrees  sometimes  before  he  gets  sold, 
and  be  a  good  horse  at  the  end  of  it.  And  I 
think  that's  about  all !" 

A  cloud  of  youngsters,  sweating  freely  and 
ready  for  any  mischief,  shot  past  on  their  way 
to  breakfast,  and  the  conversation  ended  in  a 
cloud  of  sand  and  the  drumming  of  hurrying 
hooves. 

In  the  Raika-Bagh  are  more  racing  cups  than 
this  memory  holds  the  names  of.  Chiefest  of 
all  was  the  Delhi  Assemblage  Cup — the  Im- 
perial Vase,  of  solid  gold,  won  by  Crown 
Prince.  The  other  pieces  of  plate  were  not  so 
imposing.  But  of  all  the  Crown  Jewels,  the 
most  valuable  appeared  at  the  end  of  the  in- 
spection. It  was  the  small  Maharaj  Kanwar 


i  So          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

lolling  in  state  in  a  huge  barouche — his  toes 
were  at  least  two  feet  off  the  floor — that  was 
taking  him  from  his  morning  drive.  "Have 
you  seen  my  horses?"  said  the  Maharaj  Kan- 
war.  The  four  twelve-hand  ponies  had  been 
duly  looked  over,  and  the  future  ruler  of 
Jodhpur  departed  satisfied. 


XV. 

Treats  of  the  Startling  Effect  of  a  reduction  in 
Wages  and  the  Pleasures  of  Loaferdom. 
Paints  the  State  of  the  Boondi  Road  and  the 
Treachery  of  Ganesh  of  Situr. 


C  <  A  TWENTY-FIVE  per  cent,  reduction 
^jL  all  roun'  an'  no  certain  leave  when 
you  wants  it.  Of  course  the  best  men  goes 
somewhere  else.  That's  only  natural,  and  'eres 
this  sanguinary  down  mail  a  stickin'  in  the  eye 
of  the  Khundwa  down!  I  tell  you,  Sir,  India's 
a  bad  place — a  very  bad  place.  'Tisn't  what  it 
was  when  I  came  out  one  and  thirty  years  ago, 
an'  the  drivers  was  getting  their  seven  and 
eight  'undred  rupees  a  month  an'  was  treated 
as  men." 

The  Englishman  was  on  his  way  to  Nasira- 
bad,  and  a  gentleman  in  the  Railway  was  ex- 
plaining to  him  the  real  reason  of  the  decadence 
of  the  Empire.  It  was  because  the  Rajputana- 
Malwa  Railway  had  cut  all  its  employes 
twenty-five  per  cent.  And,  in  truth,  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  fine  free  language  where  gentle- 
men in  the  carriage  department,  foremen- 


182 


fitters,  station  and  assistant  station  masters  do 
foregather.     It  is  ungenerous  to  judge  a  caste 
by  a  few  samples;  but  the  Englishman  had  on 
the  road  and  elsewhere  seen  a  good  deal  of 
gentlemen  on  the  Railway,  and  is  prepared  to 
write  down  here  that  they  spend  their  pay  in  a 
manner  that  would  do  credit  to  an  income  of 
a  thousand  a  month.    Now  they  are  saying  that 
the  twenty-five  per  cent,  reduction  is  depriving 
them  of  the  pleasures  of  life.     So  much  the 
better  if  it  makes  them  moderately  economical 
in  their  expenditure.    Revolving  these  things  in 
his  mind,  together  with  one  or  two  stories  of 
extravagance  not  quite  fit  for  publication,  the 
Englishman  came  to  Nasirabad,  before  sunrise, 
and  there  to  a  tonga.    Imagine  an  icy  pause  of 
several  minutes  followed  by  language.    Quoth 
Ram  Baksh,  proprietor,  driver,  sais,  and  every- 
thing else,  calmly: — "At  this  time  of  the  year 
and  having  regard  to  the  heat  of  the  sun,  who 
wants  a  top  to  a  tonga  ?    I  have  no  top.    I  have 
a  top,  but  it  would  take  till  twelve  o'clock  to 
put  it  on.    And  behold,  Sahib,  Padre  Martum 
Sahib  went  in  this  tonga  to  Deoli.     All  the 
officer  Sahibs  of  Deoli  and  Nasirabad  go  in  this 
tonga,  for  shikar.    This  is  a  'shutin-tonga !' ' 
When  Church  and  Army  are  brought  against 
one,  argument  is  in  vain.    But  to  take  a  soft, 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  183 

office-bred  unfortunate  into  the  wilderness 
upon  a  skeleton,  a  diagram  of  a  conveyance,  is 
brutality.  Ram  Baksh  did  not  see  it,  and 
headed  his  two  thirteen-hand  rats  straight 
towards  the  morning  sun,  along  a  beautiful 
military  road.  "We  shall  get  to  Deoli  in  six 
hours,"  said  Ram  Baksh  the  boastful,  and,  even 
as  he  spoke,  the  spring  of  the  tonga  bar  snapt 
"mit  a  harp-like  melodious  twang."  "What 
does  it  matter?"  said  Ram  Baksh.  "Has  the 
Sahib  never  seen  a  tonga-iron  break  before? 
Padre  Martum  Sahib  and  all  the  officer  Sahibs 
in  Deoli"— "Ram  Baksh,"  said  the  English- 
man sternly,  "I  am  not  a  Padre  Sahib  nor  an 
officer  Sahib,  and  if  you  say  anything  more 
about  Padre  Martum  Sahib  or  the  officers  in 
Deoli  I  shall  grow  very  angry,  and  beat  you 
with  a  stick,  Ram  Baksh." 

"Humph,"  said  Ram  Baksh,  "I  knew  you 
were  not  a  Padre  Sahib."  The  little  mishap 
was  patched  up  with  string,  and  the  tonga  went 
on  merrily.  It  is  Stevenson  who  says  that  the 
"invitation  to  the  road,"  nature's  great  morn- 
ing song,  has  not  yet  been  properly  understood 
or  put  to  music.  The  first  note  of  it  is  the 
sound  of  the  dawn-wind  through  long  grass, 
and  the  last,  in  this  country,  the  creaking  of  the 
bullock  wains  getting  under  way  in  some  un- 


1 84  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

seen  serai.  It  is  good,  good  beyond  expression, 
to  see  the  sun  rise  upon  a  strange  land  and  to 
know  that  you  have  only  to  go  forward  and 
possess  that  land — that  it  will  dower  you  before 
the  day  is  ended  with  a  hundred  new  impres- 
sions and,  perhaps,  one  idea.  It  is  good  to 
snuff  the  wind  when  it  comes  in  over  grassy 
uplands  or  down  from  the  tops  of  the  blue 
Aravalis — dry  and  keen  as  a  new-ground 
sword.  Best  of  all  is  to  light  the  First  Pipe — 
is  there  any  tobacco  so  good  as  that  we  burn  in 
honour  of  the  breaking  day? — and,  while  the 
ponies  wake  the  long  white  road  with  their 
hooves  and  the  birds  go  abroad  in  companies 
together,  to  thank  your  stars  that  you  are 
neither  the  Subaltern  who  has  Orderly  Room, 
the  'Stunt  who  has  kacherri,  or  the  Judge  who 
has  Court  to  attend ;  but  are  only  a  loafer  in  a 
flannel  shirt,  bound,  if  God  please,  to  "Little 
Boondi,"  somewhere  beyond  the  faint  hills 
across  the  plain. 

But  there  was  alloy  in  this  delight.  Men  had 
told  the  Englishman  darkly  that  Boondi  State 
had  no  love  for  Englishmen,  that  there  was  no- 
where to  stop,  and  that  no  one  would  do  any- 
thing for  money.  Love  was  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. Further,  it  was  an  acknowledged  fact 
that  there  were  no  Englishmen  of  any  kind  in 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  185 

Boondi.  But  the  Englishman  trusted  that 
Ganesh  would  be  good  to  him,  and  that  he 
would,  somehow  or  other,  fall  upon  his  feet 
as  he  had  fallen  before.  The  road  from 
Nasirabad  to  Deoli,  being  military  in  its  nature, 
is  nearly  as  straight  as  a  ruler  and  about  as 
smooth.  It  runs  for  the  most  part  through 
"Arthurian"  county,  just  such  a  land  as  the 
Knights  of  the  Round  Table  went  a-looting  in 
—is  gently  sloping  pasture  ground,  where  a 
man  could  see  his  enemy  a  long  way  off  and 
"ride  a  wallop"  at  him,  as  the  Morte  d'Arthur 
puts  it,  of  a  clear  half  mile.  Here  and  there 
little  rocky  hills,  the  last  off-shoots  of  the 
Aravalis  to  the  west,  break  the  ground ;  but  the 
bulk  of  it  is  fair  and  without  pimples.  The 
Deoli  Force  are  apparently  so  utterly  Irregular 
that  they  can  do  without  a  telegraph,  have  their 
mails  carried  by  runners,  and  dispense  with 
bridges  over  all  the  fifty-six  miles  that  separate 
them  from  Nasirabad.  However,  a  man  who 
goes  shikarring  for  any  length  of  time  in  one 
of  Ram  Baksh's  tongas  would  soon  learn  to 
dispense  with  anything  and  everything.  "All 
the  Sahibs  use  my  tongas;  I've  got  eight  of 
them  and  twenty  pairs  of  horses,"  said  Ram 
Baksh.  "They  go  as  far  as  Gangra,  where  the 
tigers  are,  for  they  are  'shutin-tongas.'  "  Now 


1 86  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

the  Englishman  knew  Gangra  slightly,  having 
seen  it  on  the  way  to  Udaipur;  and  it  was  as 
perverse  and  rocky  a  place  as  any  man  would 
desire  to  see.  He  politely  expressed  doubt.  "I 
tell  you  my  tongas  go  anywhere,''  said  Ram 
Baksh  testily.  A  hay-waggon — they  cut  and 
stack  their  hay  in  these  parts — blocked  the 
road.  Ram  Baksh  ran  the  tonga  to  one  side, 
into  a  rut,  fetched  up  on  a  tree-stump,  re- 
bounded on  to  a  rock,  and  struck  the  kunkur. 
''Observe,"  said  Ram  Baksh;  "but  that  is  noth- 
ing. You  wait  till  we  get  on  the  Boondi  road 
and  I'll  make  you  shake,  shake  like  a  botal." 
"Is  it  very  bad?"  "I've  never  been  to  Boondi 
myself,  but  I  hear  it  is  all  rocks — great  rocks 
as  big  as  the  tonga."  But  though  he  boasted  of 
himself  and  his  horses  nearly  all  the  way,  he 
could  not  reach  Deoli  in  anything  like  the  time 
he  had  set  forth.  "If  I  am  not  at  Boondi  by 
four,"  he  had  said,  at  six  in  the  morning,  "let 
me  go  without  my  fare."  But  by  midday  he 
was  still  far  from  Deoli,  and  Boondi  lay 
twenty-eight  miles  beyond  that  station.  "What 
can  I  do?"  said  he.  "I've  laid  out  lots  of 
horses — any  amount.  But  the  fact  is  I've  never 
been  to  Boondi.  I  shan't  go  there  in  the  night." 
Ram  Baksh's  "lots  of  horses"  were  three  pair 
between  Nasirabad  and  Deoli — three  pair  of 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  187 

undersized  ponies  who  did  wonders.  One 
place,  after  he  had  quitted  a  cotton  waggon,  a 
drove  of  Bunjaras  and  a  man  on  horseback, 
with  his  carbine  across  his  saddle-bow,  the 
Englishman  came  to  a  stretch  of  road,  so 
utterly  desolate  that  he  said: — "Now  I  am 
clear  of  everybody  who  ever  knew  me.  This 
is  the  beginning  of  the  waste  into  which  the 
scape-goat  was  sent." 

From  a  bush  by  the  road  side  sprang  up  a 
fat  man  who  cried  aloud  in  English: — "How 
does  Your  Honour  do?  I  met  Your  Honour 
in  Simla  this  year !  Are  you  quite  well  ?  Ya-as, 
I  am  here.  Your  Honour  remembers  me?  I 
am  travelling.  Ya-as.  Ha !  Ha !"  and  he  went 
on,  leaving  His  Honour  bemazed.  It  was  a 
Babu — a  Simla  Babu,  of  that  there  could  be 
no  doubt ;  but  who  he  was  or  what  he  was  do- 
ing, thirty  miles  from  anywhere,  His  Honour 
could  not  make  out.  The  native  moves  about 
more  than  most  folk,  except  railway  people, 
imagine.  The  big  banking  firms  of  Upper 
India  naturally  keep  in  close  touch  with  their 
great  change-houses  in  Ajmir,  despatching  and 
receiving  messengers  regularly.  So  it  comes 
to  pass  that  the  necessitous  circumstances  of 
Lieutenant  McRannamack,  of  the  Tyneside 
Tail-twisters,  quartered  on  the  Frontier,  are 


1 88  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

thoroughly  known  and  discussed  a  thousand 
miles  south  of  the  cantonment  where  the  light- 
hearted  Lieutenant  goes  to  the  "beastly  shroff." 
This  is  by  the  way.  Let  us  return  to  the 
banks  of  the  Banas  river,  where  "poor  Carey," 
as  Tod  calls  him,  came  when  he  was  sickening 
for  his  last  illness.  The  Banas  is  one  of  those 
streams  which  runs  "over  golden  sands  with 
feet  of  silver,"  but,  from  the  scarp  of  its  banks, 
Deoli  in  the  rains  must  be  isolated.  Ram 
Baksh,  questioned  hereon,  vowed  that  all  the 
Officer  Sahibs  never  dreamed  of  halting,  but 
went  over  in  boats  or  on  elephants.  According 
to  Ram  Baksh  the  men  of  Deoli  must  be  won- 
derful creatures.  They  do  nothing  but  use  his 
tongas.  A  break  in  some  low  hills  gives  on  to 
the  dead  flat  plain  in  which  Deoli  stands.  "You 
must  stop  here  for  the  night,"  said  Ram  Baksh. 
"I  will  not  take  my  horses  forward  in  the  dark  ; 
God  knows  where  the  dak-bungalow  is.  I've 
forgotten,  but  any  one  of  the  Officer  Sahibs  in 
Deoli  will  tell  you."  Those  in  search  of  a  new 
emotion  would  do  well  to  run  about  an  ap- 
parently empty  cantonment,  in  a  disgraceful 
shooting-tonga,  in  search  of  a  place  to  sleep  in. 
Chaprassis  come  out  of  the  back  verandahs, 
and  are  rude,  and  regimental  Babus  hop  out  of 
go-downs  and  are  flippant,  while  in  the  distance 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  189 

a  Sahib  looks  out  of  his  room,  where  he  has 
evidently  been  sleeping,  and  eyes  the  dusty  for- 
lorn-hope with  silent  contempt.  It  should  be 
mentioned  that  the  dust  on  the  Deoli  road  not 
only  powders  but  masks  the  face  and  raiment 
of  the  passenger. 

Next  morning  Ram  Baksh  was  awake  with 
the  dawn,  and  clamorous  to  go  on  to  Boondi. 
"I've  sent  a  pair  of  horses,  big  horses,  out  there 
and  the  sais  is  a  fool.  Perhaps  they  will  be  lost, 
I  want  to  find  them."  He  dragged  his  unhappy 
passenger  on  to  the  road  once  more  and  de- 
manded of  all  who  passed  the  dak-bungalow 
which  was  the  way  to  Boondi.  "Observe!" 
said  he,  "there  can  be  only  one  road,  and  if  I  hit 
it  we  are  all  right,  and  I'll  show  you  what  the 
tonga  can  do."  "Amen,"  said  the  Englishman 
devoutly,  as  the  tonga  jumped  into  and  out  of  a 
larger  hole.  "Without  doubt  this  is  the  Boondi 
road,"  said  Ram  Baksh;  "it  is  so  bad." 

Beyond  Deoli  the  cultivated  land  gave  place 
to  more  hills  peppered  with  stones,  stretches  of 
ak-scrub  and  clumps  of  thorn  varied  with  a  lit- 
tle jhil  here  and  there  for  the  benefit  of  the 
officers  of  the  Deoli  Irregular  Force. 

It  has  been  before  said  that  the  Boondi  State 
has  no  great  love  for  Sahibs.  The  state  of  the 
road  proves  it.  "This,"  said  Ram  Baksh,  tap- 


1 90  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

ping  the  wheel  to  see  whether  the  last  plunge 
had  smashed  a  spoke,  "is  a  very  good  road. 
You  wait  till  you  see  what  is  ahead/'  And  the 
funeral  staggered  on — over  irrigation  cuts, 
through  buffalo  wallows,  and  dried  pools 
stamped  with  the  hundred  feet  of  kine  (this  by 
the  way  is  the  most  cruel  road  of  all) ,  up  rough 
banks  where  the  rock  ledges  peered  out  of  the 
dust,  down  step-cut  dips  ornamented  with 
large  stones,  and  along  two-feet  deep  ruts  of 
the  rains,  where  the  tonga  went  slantwise  even 
to  the  very  verge  of  upsetting.  It  was  a  royal 
road — a  native  road — a  Raj  road  of  the  rough- 
est, and,  through  all  its  jolts  and  bangs  and 
bumps  and  dips  and  heaves,  the  eye  of  Ram 
Baksh  rolled  in  its  blood-shot  socket,  seeking 
for  the  "big  horses"  he  had  so  rashly  sent  into 
the  wilderness.  The  ponies  that  had  done  the 
last  twenty  miles  into  Deoli  were  nearly  used 
up,  and  did  their  best  to  lie  down  in  the  dry 
beds  of  nullahs.  [Nota  bene. — There  was  an 
unbridged  nullah  every  five  minutes,  for  the 
set  of  the  country  was  towards  the  Mej  river. 
In  the  rains  it  must  be  utterly  impassable.] 

A  man  came  by  on  horseback,  his  servant 
walking  before  with  platter  and  meal  bag. 
"Have  you  seen  any  horses  hereabouts  ?"  cried 
Ram  Baksh.  "Horses!  horses!  What  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  191 

Devil  have  I  to  do  with  your  horses?  D'you 
think  I've  stolen  them?"  Now  this  was  de- 
cidedly a  strange  answer,  and  showed  the  rude- 
ness of  the  land.  An  old  woman  under  a  tree 
cried  out  in  a  strange  tongue  and  ran  away.  It 
was  a  dream-like  experience,  this  hunting  for 
horses  on  a  "blasted  heath"  with  neither  house 
nor  hut  nor  shed  in  sight.  "If  we  keep  to  the 
road  long  enough  we  must  find  them.  Look 
at  the  road !  This  Raj  ought  to  be  smitten  with 
bullets."  Ram  Baksh  had  been  pitched  for- 
ward nearly  on  to  the  off-pony's  rump,  and  was 
in  a  very  bad  temper  indeed.  The  funeral 
found  a  house — a  house  walled  with  thorns — 
and  near  by  were  the  two  big  horses,  thirteen- 
two  if  an  inch,  and  harnessed  quite  regardless 
of  expense. 

Everything  was  re-packed  and  re-bound  with 
triple  ropes,  and  the  Sahib  was  provided  with 
an  extra  cushion ;  but  he  had  reached  a  sort  of 
dreamsome  Nirvana;  having  several  times  bit- 
ten his  tongue  through,  cut  his  boot  against  the 
wheel-edge,  and  twisted  his  legs  into  a  true- 
lover's-knot.  There  was  no  further  sense  of 
suffering  in  him.  He  was  even  beginning  to 
enjoy  himself  faintly  and  by  gasps.  The  road 
struck  boldly  into  hills  with  all  their  teeth  on 
edge,  that  is  to  say,  their  strata  breaking  across 


192  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

the  road  in  a  series  of  little  ripples.  The  effect 
of  this  was  amazing.  The  tonga  skipped  mer- 
rily as  a  young  fawn,  from  ridge  to  ridge,  and 
never  seemed  to  have  both  wheels  on  the 
ground  at  the  same  time.  It  shivered,  it  palpi- 
tated, it  shook,  it  slid,  it  hopped,  it  waltzed,  it 
ricochetted,  it  bounded  like  a  kangaroo,  it  blun- 
dered like  a  sledge,  it  swayed  like  a  top-heavy 
coach  on  a  down-grade,  it  "kicked"  like  a  badly 
coupled  railway  carriage,  it  squelched  like  a 
country-cart,  it  squeaked  in  its  torment,  and, 
lastly,  it  essayed  to  plough  up  the  ground  with 
its  nose.  After  three  hours  of  this  perform- 
ance, it  struck  a  tiny  little  ford,  set  between 
steeply-sloping  banks  of  white  dust,  where  the 
water  was  clear  brown  and  full  of  fish.  And 
here  a  blissful  halt  was  called  under  the  shadow 
of  the  high  bank  of  a  tobacco  field. 

Would  you  taste  one  of  the  real  pleasures  of 
Life  ?  Go  through  severe  acrobatic  exercises  in 
and  about  a  tonga  for  four  hours ;  then,  having 
eaten  and  drank  till  you  can  no  more,  sprawl, 
in  the  cool  of  a  nullah  bed  with  your  head 
among  the  green  tobacco,  and  your  mind  adrift 
with  the  one  little  cloud  in  a  royally  blue  sky. 
Earth  has  nothing  more  to  offer  her  children 
than  this  deep  delight  of  animal  well-being. 
There  were  butterflies  in  the  tobacco — six  dif- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  193 

f  erent  kinds,  and  a  little  rat  came  out  and  drank 
at  the  ford.    To  him  succeeded  the  flight  into 
Egypt.    The  white  bank  of  the  ford  framed  the 
picture  perfectly — the  Mother  in  blue,   on  a 
great  white  donkey,  holding  the  Child  in  her 
arms,   and  Joseph  walking  beside,   his   hand 
upon  the  donkey's  withers.    By  all  the  laws  of 
the  East,  Joseph  should  have  been  riding  and 
the  Mother  walking.     This  was  an  exception 
decreed  for  the  Englishman's  special  benefit. 
It  was  very  warm  and  very  pleasant,  and,  some- 
how, the  passers  by  the  ford  grew  indistinct, 
and  the  nullah  became  a  big  English  garden, 
with  a  cuckoo  singing  far  down  in  the  orchard, 
among  the  apple-blossoms.    The  cuckoo  started 
the  dream.     He  was  the  only  real  thing  in  it, 
for  the  garden  slipped  back  into  the  water,  but 
the  cuckoo  remained  and  called  and  called  for 
all  the  world  as  though  he  had  been  a  veritable 
English    cuckoo.      "Cuckoo — cuckoo — cuck ;" 
then  a  pause  and  renewal  of  the  cry  from  an- 
other quarter  of  the  horizon.     After  that  the 
ford  became  distasteful,  so  the  procession  was 
driven  forward  and  in  time  plunged  into  what 
must  have  been  a  big  city  once,  but  the  only  in- 
habitants were  oil-men.    There  were  abundance 
of  tombs  here,  and  one  carried  a  life-like  carv- 
ing in  high  relief  of  a  man  on  horseback  spear- 


194          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

ing  a  foot-soldier.  Hard  by  this  place  the  road 
or  rut  turned  by  great  gardens,  very  cool  and 
pleasant,  full  of  tombs  and  black-faced  mon- 
keys who  quarrelled  among  the  tombs,  and  shut 
in  from  the  sun  by  gigantic  banians  and  mango 
trees.  Under  the  trees  and  behind  the  walls, 
priests  sat  singing ;  and  the  Englishman  would 
have  enquired  into  what  strange  place  he  had 
fallen,  but  the  men  did  not  understand  him. 

Ganesh  is  a  mean  little  god  of  circumscribed 
powers.  He  was  dreaming,  with  a  red  and 
flushed  face,  under  a  banian  tree ;  and  the  Eng- 
lishman gave  him  four  annas  to  arrange  mat- 
ters comfortably  at  Boondi.  His  priest  took 
the  four  annas,  but  Ganesh  did  nothing  what- 
ever, as  shall  be  shown  later.  His  only  excuse 
is  that  his  trunk  was  a  good  deal  worn,  and  he 
would  have  been  better  for  some  more  silver 
leaf,  but  that  was  no  fault  of  the  Englishman. 

Beyond  the  dead  city  was  a  jhil,  full  of  snipe 
and  duck,  winding  in  and  out  of  the  hills ;  and 
beyond  the  jhil,  hidden  altogether  among  the 
hills,  was  Boondi.  The  nearer  to  the  city  the 
viler  grew  the  road  and  the  more  overwhelming 
the  curiosity  of  the  inhabitants.  But  what  be- 
fel  at  Boondi  must  be  reserved  for  another 
chapter. 


XVI. 


The  Comedy  of  Errors  and  the  Exploitation  of 
Boondi.  The  Castaway  of  the  Dispensary 
and  the  Children  of  the  Schools.  A  Con- 
sideration of  the  Shields  of  Rajasthan  and 
other  trifles. 

IT  is  high  time  that  a  new  treaty  were  made 
with  Maha  Rao  Raja  Ram  Singh,  Bahadur, 
Raja  of  Boondi.  He  keeps  the  third  article  of 
the  old  one  too  faithfully,  which  says  that  he 
"shall  not  enter  into  negotiations  with  anyone 
without  the  consent  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment." He  does  not  negotiate  at  all.  Arrived 
at  Boondi  Gate,  the  Englishman  asked  where 
he  might  lay  his  head  for  the  night,  and  the 
Quarter-Guard  with  one  accord  said: — "The 
Sukh  Mahal,  which  is  beyond  the  city,"  and  the 
tonga  went  thither  through  the  length  of  the 
town,  of  which  more  presently,  till  it  arrived  at 
a  pavilion  on  a  lake — a  place  of  two  turrets 
connected  by  an  open  colonnade.  The  "house" 
was  open  to  the  winds  of  heaven  and  the 
pigeons  of  the  Raj ;  but  the  latter  had  polluted 
more  than  the  first  could  purify.  A  snowy- 


196  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

bearded  chowkidar  crawled  out  of  a  place  of 
tombs  which  he  seemed  to  share  with  some 
monkeys,  and  threw  himself  into  Anglo-Saxon 
attitudes.  He  was  a  great  deal  worse  than 
Ram  Baksh,  for  he  said  that  all  the  Officer 
Sahibs  of  Deoli  came  to  the  Sukh  Mahal  for 
shikar  and — never  went  away  again,  so  pleased 
were  they.  The  Sahib  had  brought  the  honour 
of  his  Presence,  and  he  was  a  very  old  man, 
and  without  a  purwana  could  do  nothing. 
Then  he  fell  deeply  asleep  without  warning; 
and  there  was  a  pause,  for  one  hour  only, 
which  the  Englishman  spent  in  seeing  the  lake. 
It,  like  the  jhils  on  the  road,  wound  in  and  out 
among  the  hills,  and,  on  the  bund  side  was 
bounded  by  a  hill  of  black  rock  crowned  with 
a  chhatri  of  grey  stone.  Below  the  bund  was 
a  garden  as  fair  as  eye  could  wish,  and  the 
shores  of  the  lake  were  dotted  with  little 
temples.  Given  a  habitable  house — a  mere  dak- 
bungalow — it  would  be  a  delightful  spot  to  rest 
in.  Warned  by  some  bitter  experiences  in  the 
past,  the  Englishman  knew  that  he  was  in  for 
the  demi-semi-royal  or  embarrassing  reception, 
when  a  man,  being  the  unwelcome  guest  of  a 
paternal  State,  is  neither  allowed  to  pay  his 
way  and  make  himself  comfortable,  nor  is  he 
willingly  entertained.  When  he  saw  a  one- 


LETTERS  OF  MAHQUE  197 

eyed  munshi,  he  felt  certain  that  Ganesh  had 
turned  upon  him  at  last.  The  munshi  de- 
manded and  received  the  purwana.  Then  he 
sat  down  and  questioned  the  traveller  exhaust- 
ively as  to  his  character  and  profession.  Hav- 
ing thoroughly  satisfied  himself  that  the  visitor 
was  in  no  way  connected  with  the  Government 
or  the  "Agenty  Sahib  Bahadur,"  he  took  no 
further  thought  of  the  matter;  and  the  day 
began  to  draw  in  upon  a  grassy  bund,  an  open 
work  pavilion,  and  a  disconsolate  tonga. 

At  last  the  faithful  servitor,  who  had  helped 
to  fight  the  Battle  of  the  Mail  Bags  at  Udaipur, 
broke  his  silence,  and  vowing  that  all  these 
devil-people — not  more  than  twelve — had  only 
come  to  see  the  tamasha,  suggested  the  break- 
ing of  the  munshi's  head.  And,  indeed,  that 
seemed  the  only  way  of  breaking  the  ice;  for 
the  munshi  had  in  the  politest  possible  lan- 
guage, put  forward  the  suggestion  that  there 
was  nothing  particular  to  show  that  the  Sahib 
who  held  the  purwana  had  really  any  right  to 
hold  it.  The  chowkidar  woke  up  and  chaunted 
a  weird  chaunt,  accompanied  by  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  attitudes,  a  new  set.  He  was  an  old 
man,  and  all  the  Sahib-log  said  so,  and  within 
the  pavilion  were  tables  and  chairs  and  lamps 
and  bath-tubs,  and  everything  that  the  heart  of 


198          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

man  could  desire.  Even  now  an  enormous 
staff  of  khalassis  were  arranging  all  these 
things  for  the  comfort  of  the  Sahib  Bahadur 
and  Protector  of  the  Poor,  who  had  brought 
the  honour  and  glory  of  his  Presence  all  the 
way  from  Deoli.  What  did  tables  and  chairs 
and  eggs  and  fowls  and  very  bright  lamps  mat- 
ter to  the  Raj  ?  He  was  an  old  man  and 

"Who  put  the  present  Raja  on  the  guddee?" 
"Lake  Sahib/'  promptly  answered  the  chowki- 
dar.  "I  was  there.  That  is  the  news  of  many 
old  years."  Now  Tod  says  it  was  he  himself 
who  installed  "Lalji  the  beloved"  in  the  year 
1821.  The  Englishman  began  to  lose  faith  in 
the  chowkidar.  The  munshi  said  nothing  but 
followed  the  Englishman  with  his  one  work- 
able eye.  A  merry  little  breeze  crisped  the 
waters  of  the  lake,  and  the  fish  began  to  frolic 
before  going  to  bed. 

"Is  nobody  going  to  do  or  bring  anything?" 
said  the  Englishman  faintly,  wondering 
whether  the  local  gaol  would  give  him  a  bed  if 
he  killed  the  munshi.  "I  am  an  old  man,"  said 
the  chowkidar,  "and  because  of  their  great 
respect  and  reverence  for  the  Sahib  in  whose 
Presence  I  am  only  a  bearer  of  orders  and  a 
servant  awaiting  them,  men,  many  men,  are 
bringing  now  kanats  which  I  with  my  own 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  199 

hands  will  wrap,  here  and  there,  there  and  here, 
in  and  about  the  pillars  of  this  place ;  and  thus 
you,  O  Sahib,  who  have  brought  the  honour  of 
your  presence  to  the  Boondi  Raj  over  the  road 
to  Deoli,  which  is  a  kutcha  road,  will  be  pro- 
vided with  a  very  fine  and  large  apartment  over 
which  I  will  watch  while  you  go  to  kill  the 
tigers  in  these  hills." 

By  this  time  two  youths  had  twisted  kanats 
round  some  of  the  pillars  of  the  colonnade, 
making  a  sort  of  loose-box  with  a  two-foot  air- 
way all  round  the  top.  There  was  no  door,  but 
there  were  unlimited  windows.  Into  this  en- 
closure the  chowkidar  heaped  furniture  on 
which  many  generations  of  pigeons  had  evi- 
dently been  carried  off  by  cholera,  until  he  was 
entreated  to  desist.  "What,"  said  he  scorn- 
fully, "are  tables  and  chairs  to  this  Raj  ?  If  six 
be  not  enough,  let  the  Presence  give  an  order, 
and  twelve  shall  be  forthcoming.  Everything 
shall  be  forthcoming."  Here  he  filled  a  chirag 
with  kerosene  oil  and  set  it  in  a  box  upon  a 
stick.  Luckily,  the  oil  which  he  poured  so 
lavishly  from  a  quart  bottle  was  bad,  or  he 
would  have  been  altogether  consumed. 

Night  had  fallen  long  before  this  magnifi- 
cence was  ended.  The  superfluous  furniture — 
chairs  for  the  most  part — was  shovelled  out 


200  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

into  the  darkness  and  by  the  light  of  a  flam- 
boyant chirag — a  merry  wind  forbade  candles 
— the  Englishman  went  to  bed,  and  was  lulled 
to  sleep  by  the  rush  of  the  water  escaping  from 
the  overflow  trap  and  the  splash  of  the  water- 
turtle  as  he  missed  the  evasive  fish.  It  was  a 
curious  sight.  Cats  and  dogs  rioted  about  the 
enclosure,  and  a  wind  from  the  lake  bellied  the 
kanats.  The  brushwood  of  the  hills  around 
snapped  and  cracked  as  beasts  went  through  it, 
and  creatures — not  jackals — made  dolorous 
noises.  On  the  lake  it  seemed  that  hundreds  of 
water-birds  were  keeping  a  hotel,  and  that  there 
were  arrivals  and  departures  throughout  the 
night.  The  Raj  insisted  upon  providing  a 
guard  of  two  sepoys,  very  pleasant  men  on  four 
rupees  a  month.  These  said  that  tigers  some- 
times wandered  about  on  the  hills  above  the 
lake,  but  were  most  generally  to  be  found  five 
miles  away.  And  the  Englishman  promptly 
dreamed  that  a  one  eyed  tiger  came  into  his 
tent  without  a  purwana.  But  it  was  only  a  wild 
cat  after  all;  and  it  fled  before  the  shoes  of 
civilisation. 

The  Sukh  Mahal  was  completely  separated 
from  the  city,  and  might  have  been  a  country- 
house.  It  should  be  mentioned  that  Boondi  is 
jammed  into  a  V-shaped  gorge — the  valley  at 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  201 

the  main  entrance  being  something  less  than 
five  hundred  yards  across.  As  it  splays  out,  the 
thickly-packed  houses  follow  its  line,  and,  seen 
from  above,  seem  like  cattle  being  herded  to- 
gether preparatory  to  a  stampede  through  the 
gate.  Owing  to  the  set  of  the  hills,  very  little 
of  the  city  is  visible  except  from  the  Palace.  It 
was  in  search  of  this  latter  that  the  Englishman 
went  abroad  and  became  so  interested  in  the 
streets  that  he  forgot  all  about  it  for  a  time. 
Jeypore  is  a  show-city  and  is  decently  drained ; 
Udaipur  is  blessed  with  a  State  Engineer  and 
a  printed  form  of  Government;  for  Jodhpur 
the  dry  sand,  the  burning  sun,  and  an  energetic 
doctor  have  done  a  good  deal,  but  Boondi  has 
none  of  these  things.  The  crampedness  of  the 
locality  aggravates  the  evil,  and  it  can  only  be 
in  the  rains  which  channel  and  furrow  the 
rocky  hill-sides  that  Boondi  is  at  all  swept  out. 
The  Nal  Sagar,  a  lovely  little  stretch  of  water, 
takes  up  the  head  of  the  valley  called  the  Banda 
Gorge,  and  must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  re- 
ceive a  good  deal  of  unholy  drainage.  But  set- 
ting aside  this  weakness,  it  is  a  fascinating 
place — this  jumbled  city  of  straight  streets  and 
cool  gardens,  where  gigantic  mangoes  and 
peepuls  intertwine  over  gurgling  water-courses, 
and  the  cuckoo  comes  at  mid-day.  It  boasts  no 


202  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

foolish  Municipality  to  decree  when  a  house  is 
dangerous  and  unhabitable.  The  newer  shops 
are  built  into,  on  to,  over  and  under,  time- 
blackened  ruins  of  an  older  day,  and  the  little 
children  skip  about  tottering  arcades  and 
grass-grown  walls,  while  their  parents  chatter 
below  in  the  crowded  bazaar.  In  the  back 
slums,  the  same  stones  seem  to  be  used  over 
and  over  again  for  house-building,  perhaps  be- 
cause there  is  no  space  to  bring  up  laden  buffa- 
loes. Wheeled  conveyances  are  scarce  in 
Boondi  City — there  is  scant  room  for  carts, 
and  the  streets  are  paved  with  knobsome 
stones,  unpleasant  to  walk  over.  From  time 
to  time  an  inroad  of  Bun  jams'  pack-bullocks 
sweeps  the  main  street  clear  of  life,  or  one  of 
the  Raja's  elephants — he  has  twelve  of  them 
— blocks  the  way.  But,  for  the  most  part,  the 
foot  passengers  have  all  the  city  for  their  own. 
They  do  not  hurry  themselves.  They  sit  in 
the  sun  and  think,  or  put  on  all  the  arms  in  the 
family,  and,  hung  with  ironmongery,  parade 
before  their  admiring  friends.  Other  men, 
lean,  dark  men,  with  bound  jaws  and  only  a 
tulwar  for  weapon,  dive  in  and  out  of  the  dark 
alleys,  on  errands  of  State.  It  is  a  blissfully 
lazy  city,  doing  everything  in  the  real,  true, 
original  native  way,  and  it  is  kept  in  very  good 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  203 

order  by  the  Durbar.  There  either  is  or  is  not 
an  order  for  everything.  There  is  no  order  to 
sell  fishing-hooks,  or  to  supply  an  Englishman 
with  milk,  or  to  change  for  him  Currency 
Notes.  He  must  only  deal  with  the  Durbar  for 
whatever  he  requires;  and  wherever  he  goes 
he  must  be  accompanied  by  at  least  two  men. 
They  will  tell  him  nothing,  for  they  know  or 
affect  to  know  nothing  of  the  city.  They  will 
do  nothing  except  shout  at  the  little  innocents 
who  joyfully  run  after  the  stranger  and  de- 
mand pice,  but  there  they  are,  and  there  they 
will  stay  till  he  leaves  the  city,  accompanying 
him  to  the  gate,  and  waiting  there  a  little  to  see 
that  he  is  fairly  off  and  away.  Englishmen  are 
not  encouraged  in  Boondi.  The  intending 
traveller  would  do  well  to  take  a  full  suit  of 
Political  uniform  with  the  sun-flowers,  and  the 
little  black  sword  to  sit  down  upon.  The  local 
god  is  the  "Agenty  Sahib,"  and  he  is  an  in- 
carnation without  a  name — at  least  among  the 
lower  classes.  The  educated,  when  speaking  of 
him,  always  use  the  courtly  "Bahadur"  affix: 
and  yet  it  is  a  mean  thing  to  gird  at  a  State 
which,  after  all,  is  not  bound  to  do  anything 
for  intrusive  Englishmen  without  any  visible 
means  of  livelihood.  The  King  of  this  fair 
city  should  declare  the  blockade  absolute,  and 


204          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

refuse  to  be  troubled  with  anyone  except 
"Colon-nel  Baltah  Agenty  Sahib  Bahadur" 
and  the  Politicals.  If  ever  a  railway  is  run 
through  Kotah,  as  men  on  the  Bombay  side 
declare  it  must  be,  the  cloistered  glory  of 
Boondi  will  depart,  for  Kotah  is  only  twenty 
miles  easterly  of  the  city  and  the  road  is  moder- 
ately good.  In  that  day  the  Globe-Trotter  will 
pry  about  the  place,  and  the  Charitable  Dis- 
pensary— a  gem  among  dispensaries — will  be 
public  property. 

The  Englishman  was  hunting  for  the  statue 
of  a  horse,  a  great  horse  hight  Hunja,  who  was 
a  steed  of  Irak,  and  a  King's  gift  to  Rao 
Omeda,  one  time  monarch  of  Boondi.  He 
found  it  in  the  city  square  as  Tod  had  said; 
and  it  was  an  unlovely  statue,  carven  after  the 
dropsical  fashion  of  later  Hindu  art.  No  one 
seemed  to  know  anything  about  it.  A  little  fur- 
ther on,  one  cried  from  a  bye-way  in  rusty 
English: — "Come  and  see  my  Dispensary." 
There  are  only  two  men  in  Boondi  who  speak 
English.  One  is  the  head  and  the  other  the 
assistant  teacher  of  the  English  side  of  Boondi 
Free  School.  This  third  was,  some  twenty 
years  ago,  a  pupil  of  the  Lahore  Medical  Col- 
lege when  that  institution  was  young;  and  he 
only  remembered  a  word  here  and  there.  He 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  205 

was  head  of  the  Charitable  Dispensary;  and 
insisted  upon,  then  and  there,  organising  a 
small  durbar,  and  pulling  out  all  his  books  for 
inspection.  Escape  was  hopeless :  nothing  less 
than  a  formal  inspection  and  introduction  to 
all  the  native  Baids  would  serve.  There  were 
sixteen  beds  in  and  about  the  courtyard,  and 
between  twenty  and  thirty  out-patients  stood 
in  attendance.  Making  allowances  for  un- 
touched Orientalism,  the  Dispensary  is  a  good 
one,  and  must  relieve  a  certain  amount  of 
human  misery.  There  is  no  other  in  all 
Boondi.  The  operation-book,  kept  in  English, 
showed  the  principal  complaints  of  the  country. 
They  were :— "Asthama,"  "Numonia,"  "Skin- 
diseas,"  "Dabalaty,"  and  "Loin-Bite."  This 
last  item  occurred  again  and  again — three  and 
four  cases  per  week — and  it  was  not  until  the 
Doctor  said — "Sher  se  mara"  that  the  English- 
man read  it  aright.  It  was  "lion-bite,"  or 
tiger,  if  you  insist  upon  zoological  accuracy. 
There  was  one  incorrigible  idiot,  a  handsome 
young  man,  naked  as  the  day,  who  sat  in  the 
sunshine,  shivering  and  pressing  his  hands  to 
his  head.  "I  have  given  him  blisters  and  se- 
tons — have  tried  native  and  English  treatment 
for  two  years,  but  it  is  no  use.  He  is  always  as 
you  see  him,  and  now  he  stays  here  by  the 


206  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

favour  of  the  Durbar,  which  is  a  very  good 
and  pitiful  Durbar/'  said  the  Doctor.  There 
were  many  such  pensioners  of  the  Durbar — 
men  afflicted  with  chronic  "asthama"  who 
stayed  "by  favour,"  and  were  kindly  treated. 
They  were  resting  in  the  sunshine,  their  hands 
on  their  knees,  sure  that  their  daily  dole  of 
grain  and  tobacco  and  opium  would  be  forth- 
coming. "All  folk,  even  little  children,  eat 
opium  here,"  said  the  Doctor,  and  the  diet- 
book  proved  it.  After  laborious  investigation 
of  everything,  down  to  the  last  indent  to  Bom- 
bay for  European  medicines,  the  Englishman 
was  suffered  to  depart.  "Sir,  I  thank  .  .  ." 
began  the  Native  Doctor,  but  the  rest  of  the 
sentence  stuck.  Sixteen  years  in  Boondi  does 
not  increase  knowledge  of  English;  and  he 
went  back  to  his  patients,  gravely  conning  over 
the  name  of  the  Principal  of  the  Lahore  Medi- 
cal School — a  College  now — who  had  taught 
him  all  he  knew,  and  to  whom  he  intended  to 
write.  There  was  something  pathetic  in  the 
man's  catching  at  news  from  the  outside  world 
of  men  he  had  known  as  Assistant  and  House 
Surgeons  who  are  now  Rai  Bahadurs,  and  his 
parade  of  the  few  shreds  of  English  that  still 
clung  to  him.  May  he  treat  "loin-bites"  and 
"catrack"  successfully  for  many  years.  In 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  207 

the  happy,  indolent,  fashion  that  must  have 
merits  which  we  cannot  understand,  he  is  doing 
a  good  work,  and  the  Durbar  allows  his  Dis- 
pensary as  much  as  it  wants. 

Close  to  the  Dispensary  stood  the  Free 
School  and  thither  an  importunate  munshi 
steered  the  Englishman,  who,  by  this  time,  was 
beginning  to  persuade  himself  that  he  really 
was  an  accredited  agent  of  Government  sent  to 
report  on  the  progress  of  Boondi.  From  a 
peepul-shaded  courtyard  came  a  clamour  of 
young  voices.  Thirty  or  forty  little  ones,  from 
five  to  eight  years  old,  were  sitting  in  an  open 
verandah  learning  hissab  and  Hindustani,  said 
the  teacher.  No  need  to  ask  from  what  castes 
they  came,  for  it  was  written  on  their  faces 
that  they  were  Mahajans,  Oswals,  Agger wals, 
and  in  one  or  two  cases  it  seemed,  Sharawaks 
of  Guzerat.  They  were  learning  the  business 
of  their  lives  and,  in  time,  would  take  their 
fathers'  places,  and  show  in  how  many  ways 
money  may  be  manipulated.  Here  the  pro- 
fession-type came  out  with  startling  distinct- 
ness. Through  the  chubbiness  of  almost  baby- 
hood, or  the  delicate  suppleness  of  mature 
^ars,  in  mouth  and  eyes  and  hands,  it  betrayed 
itself.  The  Rahtor,  who  comes  of  a  fighting- 
stock,  is  a  fine  animal  and  well-bred ;  the  Hara, 


208  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

who  seems  to  be  more  compactly-built,  is  also 
a  fine  animal;  but  for  a  race  that  show  blood 
in  every  line  of  their  frame,  from  the  arch  of 
the  instep  to  the  modelling  of  the  head,  the 
financial — trading  is  too  coarse  a  word — the 
financial  class  of  Rajputana  appears  to  be  the 
most  remarkable.  Later  in  life  many  become 
clouded  with  fat  on  jowl  and  paunch;  but  in 
his  youth,  his  quick-eyed,  nimble  youth,  the 
young  Marwar,  to  give  him  his  business-title, 
is  really  a  thing  of  beauty.  Also  his  manners 
are  courtly.  The  bare  ground  and  a  few  slates 
sufficed  for  the  children  who  were  merely  learn- 
ing the  ropes  that  drag  States;  but  the  Eng- 
lish class,  of  boys  from  ten  to  twelve,  was  sup- 
plied with  benches  and  forms  and  a  table  with 
a  cloth  top.  The  assistant  teacher,  for  the  head 
was  on  leave,  was  a  self-taught  man  of  Boondi, 
young  and  delicate  looking,  who  preferred 
reading  to  speaking  English.  His  youngsters 
were  supplied  with  "The  Third  English  Read- 
ing Book,"  and  were  painfully  thumbing  their 
way  through  a  doggerel  poem  about  an  "old 
man  with  hoary  hair."  One  boy,  bolder  than 
the  rest,  slung  an  English  sentence  at  the  visitoi 
and  collapsed.  It  was  his  little  stock-in-tra  '~. 
and  the  rest  regarded  him  enviously.  The  Dur- 
bar supports  the  school,  which  is  entirely  free 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  209 

and  open;  a  just  distinction  being  maintained 
between  the  various  castes.  The  old  race 
prejudice  against  payment  for  knowledge 
came  out  in  a  reply  to  question. — "You  must 
not  sell  teaching,"  said  the  teacher,  and  the 
class  murmured  applausively : — "You  must 
not  sell  teaching." 

The  population  of  Boondi  seems  more  ob- 
viously mixed  than  that  of  the  other  States. 
There  are  four  or  five  thousand  Mahomedans 
within  its  walls  and  a  sprinkling  of  aborigines 
of  various  varieties,  besides  the  human  raffle 
that  the  Bunjaras  bring  in  their  train,  with  Pa- 
thans  and  sleek  Delhi  men.  The  new  heraldry 
of  the  State  is  curious — something  after  this 
sort.  Or,  a  demi-man,  sable,  issuant  of  flames, 
holding  in  right  hand  a  sword  and  in  the  left  a 
bow — all  proper.  In  chief,  a  dagger  of  the  sec- 
ond, sheathed  vert,  fessewise  over  seven  arrows 
in  sheaf  of  the  second.  This  latter  blazon 
Boondi  holds  in  commemoration  of  the  defeat 
of  an  Imperial  Prince  who  rebelled  against  the 
Delhi  Throne  in  the  days  of  Jehangir,  when 
Boondi,  for  value  received,  took  service  under 
the  Mahomedan.  It  might  be,  but  here  there  is 
no  certainty,  the  memorial  of  Rao  Rutton's 
victory  over  Prince  Khoorm,  when  the  latter 
strove  to  raise  all  Rajputana  against  Jehangir 


210          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

his  father ;  or  of  a  second  victory  over  a  riotous 
lordling  who  harried  Mewar  a  little  later.  For 
this  exploit,  the  annals  say,  Jehangir  gave  Rao 
Rutton  honorary  flags  and  kettle-drums  which 
may  have  been  melted  down  by  the  science  of 
the  Herald's  College  into  the  blazon  aforesaid. 
All  the  heraldry  of  Rajputana  is  curious  and, 
for  such  as  hold  that  there  is  any  worth  in  the 
"Royal  Science,"  interesting.  Udaipur's  shield 
is,  naturally  gules,  a  sun  in  splendor,  as  befits 
the  "children  of  the  sun  and  fire,"  and  one  of 
the  most  ancient  houses  in  India.  Her  crest  is 
the  straight  Rajput  sword,  the  khanda;  for  an 
account  of  the  worship  of  which  very  powerful 
divinity  read  Tod.  The  supporters  are  a  Bhil 
and  a  Rajput,  attired  for  the  forlorn-hope; 
commemorating  not  only  the  defences  of  Chi- 
tor,  but  also  the  connection  OA  the  great  Bappa 
Rawul  with  the  Bhils  who  even  now  play  the 
principal  part  in  the  Crown-Marking  of  a  Rana 
of  Udaipur.  Here,  again,  Tod  explains  the 
matter  at  length.  Banswara  claims  alliance 
with  Udaipur  and  carries  a  sun,  with  a  label  of 
difference  of  some  kind.  Jeypore  has  the  five- 
coloured  flag  of  Amber  with  a  sun,  because  the 
House  claims  descent  from  Rama,  and  her 
crest  is  a  kuchnar  tree,  which  is  the  bearing  of 
Dasaratha,  father  of  Rama.  The  white  horse. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  211 

which  faces  the  tiger  as  supporter,  may  or  may 
not  be  the  memorial  of  the  great  aswamedha 
yuga  or  horse  sacrifice  that  Jey  Singh,  who 
built  Jeypore,  did  not  carry  out. 

Jodhpur  has  the  five-coloured  flag,  with  a 
falcon,  in  which  shape  Durga,  the  patron  God- 
dess of  the  State,  has  been  sometimes  good 
enough  to  appear.  She  has  perched  in  the  form 
of  a  wagtail  on  the  howdah  of  the  Chief  of 
Jeysulmir,  whose  shield  is  blazoned  with  "forts 
in  a  desert  land,"  and  a  naked  left  arm  holding 
a  broken  spear,  because,  the  legend  goes,  Jey- 
sulmir was  once  galled  by  a  horse  with  a  magic 
spear.  They  tell  the  story  to-day,  but  it  is  a 
long  one.  The  supporters  of  the  shield — this 
is  canting  heraldry  with  a  vengeance! — are 
antelopes  of  the  desert  spangled  with  gold  coin, 
because  the  State  was  long  the  refuge  of  the 
wealthy  bankers  of  India. 

Bikanir,  the  younger  House  of  Jodhpur,  car- 
ries three  white  hawks  on  the  five-coloured  flag. 
The  patron  Goddess  of  Bikanir  once  turned  the 
thorny  jungle  round  the  city  to  fruit-trees,  and 
the  crest  therefore  is  a  green  tree — strange  em- 
blem for  a  desert  principality.  The  motto, 
however,  is  a  good  one.  When  the  greater  part 
of  the  Rajput  States  were  vassals  of  Akbar, 
and  he  sent  them  abroad  to  do  his  will,  certain 


212          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

Princes  objected  to  crossing  the  Indus,  and 
asked  Birkanir  to  head  the  mutiny  because  his 
State  was  the  least  accessible.  He  consented, 
on  condition  that  they  would  all  for  one  day 
greet  him  thus: — "Jey  Jangal  dar  Badsliah!" 
History  shows  what  became  of  the  objector  and 
Bikanir's  motto: — "Hail  to  the  King  of  the 
Waste !"  proves  that  the  tale  must  be  true.  But 
from  Boondi  to  Bikanir  is  a  long  digression, 
bred  by  blissful  idleness  on  the  bund  of  the 
Burra.  It  would  have  been  sinful  not  to  let 
down  a  line  into  those  crowded  waters,  and  the 
Guards,  who  were  Mahomedans,  said  that  if 
the  Sahib  did  not  eat  fish,  they  did.  And  the 
Sahib  fished  luxuriously,  catching  two  and 
three  pounders,  of  a  perch-like  build,  when- 
ever he  chose  to  cast.  He  was  wearied  of 
schools  and  dispensaries,  and  the  futility  of 
heraldry  accorded  well  with  laziness — that  is 
to  say  Boondi. 

It  should  be  noted,  none  the  less,  that  in  this 
part  of  the  world  the  soberest  mind  will  believe 
anything — believe  in  the  ghosts  by  the  Gow 
Mukh,  and  the  dead  Thakurs,  who  get  out  of 
their  tombs  and  ride  round  the  Burra  Talao  at 
Boondi — will  credit  every  legend  and  lie  that 
rises  as  naturally  as  the  red  flush  of  sunset,  to 
gild  the  dead  glories  of  Rajasthan. 


XVII. 


Shows  that  there  may  be  Poetry  in  a  Bank,  and 
attempts  to  show  the  Wonders  of  the  Palace 
of  Boondi. 

44/TpHIS  is  the  devil's  place  you  have  come 
•*•  to,  Sahib.  No  grass  for  the  horses,  and 
the  people  don't  understand  anything,  and  their 
dirty  pice  are  no  good  in  Nasirabad.  Look 
here!"  And  Ram  Baksh  wrathfully  exhibited 
a  handful  of  lumps  of  copper.  The  nuisance  of 
taking  a  native  out  of  his  own  beat  is  that  he 
forthwith  regards  you  not  only  as  the  author  of 
his  being,  but  of  all  his  misfortunes  as  well. 
He  is  as  hampering  as  a  frightened  child  and 
as  irritating  as  a  man.  "Padre  Martum  Sahib 
never  came  here,"  said  Ram  Baksh,  with  the 
air  of  one  who  had  been  led  against  his  will 
into  bad  company. 

A  story  about  a  rat  that  found  a  piece  of  tur- 
meric and  set  up  a  bunnia's  shop  had  sent  the 
one-eyed  munshi  away,  but  a  company  of  lesser 
munshis,  runners  and  the  like,  were  in  attend- 
ance, and  they  said  that  money  might  be 
changed  at  the  Treasury,  which  was  in  the 


214          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

Palace.  It  was  quite  impossible  to  change  it 
anywhere  else — there  was  no  hookum.  From 
the  Sukh  Mahal  to  the  Palace  the  road  ran 
through  the  heart  of  the  city,  and  by  reason  of 
the  continual  shouting  of  the  munshis,  not 
more  than  ten  thousand  of  the  fifty  thousand 
people  of  Boondi  knew  for  what  purpose  the 
Sahib  was  journeying  through  their  midst. 
Cataract  was  the  most  prevalent  affliction,  cata- 
ract in  its  worst  forms,  and  it  was,  therefore, 
necessary  that  men  should  come  very  close  to 
look  at  the  stranger.  They  were  in  no  sense 
rude,  but  they  stared  devoutly.  "He  has  not 
come  for  shikar,  and  he  will  not  take  petitions. 
He  has  come  to  see  the  place,  and  God  knows 
what  he  is."  The  description  was  quite  correct, 
as  far  as  it  went;  but,  somehow  or  another, 
when  shouted  out  at  four  cross-ways  in  the 
midst  of  a  very  pleasant  little  gathering  it  did 
not  seem  to  add  to  dignity  or  command  respect. 
It  has  been  written  "the  coup  d'oeil  of  the 
castellated  Palace  of  Boondi,  from  whichever 
side  you  approach  it,  is  perhaps  the  most  strik- 
ing in  India.  Whoever  has  seen  the  Palace  of 
Boondi  can  easily  picture  to  himself  the  hang- 
ing gardens  of  Semiramis."  This  is  true — 
and  more  too.  To  give  on  paper  any  adequate 
idea  of  the  Boondi-ki-Mahal  is  impossible.  Jey- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  215 

pore  Palace  may  be  called  the  Versailles  of 
India ;  Udaipur's  House  of  State  is  dwarfed  by 
the  hills  round  it  and  the  spread  of  the  Pichola 
lake;  Jodhpur's  House  of  Strife,  grey  towers 
on  red  rock,  is  the  work  of  genius;  but  the 
Palace  of  Boondi,  even  in  broad  daylight,  is 
such  a  Palace  as  men  build  for  themselves  in 
uneasy  dreams — the  work  of  goblins  more  than 
the  work  of  men.  It  is  built  into  and  out  of 
the  hill  side,  in  gigantic  terraces,  and  domi- 
nates the  whole  of  the  city.  But  a  detailed  de- 
scription of  it  were  useless.  Owing  to  the  dip 
of  the  valley  in  which  the  city  stands,  it  can 
only  be  well  seen  from  one  place,  the  main  road 
of  the  city;  and  from  that  point  seems  like  an 
avalanche  of  masonry  ready  to  rush  down  and 
whelm  the  gorge.  Like  all  the  other  Palaces  of 
Rajputana,  it  is  the  work  of  many  hands,  and 
the  present  Raja  has  thrown  out  a  bastion  of  no 
small  size  on  one  of  the  lower  levels,  which  has 
been  four  or  five  years  in  the  building.  Only 
by  scaling  this  annex,  and,  from  the  other  side 
of  the  valley,  seeing  how  insignificant  is  its 
great  bulk  in  the  entire  scheme,  is  it  possible  to 
get  some  idea  of  the  stupendous  size  of  the 
Palace.  No  one  knows  where  the  hill  begins 
and  where  the  Palace  ends.  Men  say  that  there 
are  subterranean  chambers  leading  into  the 


heart  of  the  hills,  and  passages  communicating 
with  the  extreme  limits  of  Taragarh,  the  giant 
fortress  that  crowns  the  hill  and  flanks  the 
whole  of  the  valley  on  the  Palace  side.  They 
say  that  there  is  as  much  room  under  as  above 
ground,  and  that  none  know  the  whole  extent 
of  the  Palace.  Looking  at  it  from  below,  the 
Englishman  could  readily  believe  that  nothing 
was  impossible  for  those  who  had  built  it.  The 
dominant  impression  was  of  height — height 
that  heaved  itself  out  of  the  hillside  and 
weighed  upon  the  eyelids  of  the  beholder.  The 
steep  slope  of  the  land  had  helped  the  builders 
in  securing  this  effect.  From  the  main  road  of 
the  city  a  steep  stone-paved  ascent  led  to  the 
first  gate — name  not  communicated  by  the  zeal- 
ous following.  Two  gaudily  painted  fishes  faced 
each  other  over  the  arch,  and  there  was  little 
except  glaring  colour  ornamentation  visible. 
This  gate  gave  into  what  they  called  the  chowk 
of  the  Palace,  and  one  had  need  to  look  twice 
ere  realising  that  this  open  space,  crammed  with 
human  life,  was  a  spur  of  the  hill  on  which  the 
Palace  stood,  paved  and  built  over.  There  had 
been  little  attempt  at  levelling  the  ground.  The 
foot-worn  stones  followed  the  contour  of  the 
ground,  and  ran  up  to  the  walls  of  the  Palace 
smooth  as  glass.  Immediately  facing  the  Gate 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          217 

of  the  Fish  was  the  Quarter-Guard  barracks,  a 
dark  and  dirty  room,  and  here,  in  a  chamber 
hollowed  out  in  a  wall,  were  stored  the  big 
drums  of  State,  the  nakarras.  The  appearance 
of  the  Englishman  seemed  to  be  the  signal  for 
smiting  the  biggest  of  all  the  drums,  and  the 
dull  thunder  rolled  up  the  Palace  chowk,  and 
came  back  from  the  unpierced  Palace  walls  in 
hollow  groaning.  It  was  an  eerie  welcome — 
this  single,  sullen  boom.  In  this  enclosure, 
four  hundred  years  ago,  if  the  legend  be  true, 
a  son  of  the  great  Rao  Bando,  who  dreamed  a 
dream  as  Pharaoh  did  and  saved  Boondi  from 
famine,  left  a  little  band  of  Haras  to  wait  his 
bidding  while  he  went  up  into  the  Palace  and 
slew  his  two  uncles  who  had  usurped  the 
throne  and  abandoned  the  faith  of  their  fa- 
thers. When  he  had  pierced  one  and  hacked 
the  other,  as  they  sat  alone  and  unattended,  he 
called  out  to  his  followers,  who  made  a 
slaughter-house  of  the  enclosure  and  cut  up 
the  usurpers'  adherents.  At  the  best  of  times 
men  slip  on  these  smooth  stones ;  and  when  the 
place  was  swimming  in  blood,  foothold  must 
have  been  treacherous  indeed. 

An  inquiry  for  the  place  of  the  murder  of 
the  uncles — it  is  marked  by  a  staircase  slab,  or 
Tod,  the  accurate,  is  at  fault — was  met  by  the 


218  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

answer  that  the  Treasury  was  close  at  hand. 
They  speak  a  pagan  tongue  in  Boondi,  swallow 
half  their  words,  and  adulterate  the  remainder 
with  local  patois.  What  can  be  extracted  from 
a  people  who  call  four  miles  variously  do  kosh, 
do  kushf  dhi  khas,  doo-a  koth,  and  diakast,  all 
one  word  ?  The  country-folk  are  quite  unintel- 
ligible; which  simplifies  matters.  It  is  the 
catching  of  a  shadow  of  a  meaning  here  and 
there,  the  hunting  for  directions  cloaked  in 
dialect,  that  is  annoying.  Foregoing  his  arch- 
aeological researches,  the  Englishman  sought 
the  Treasury.  He  took  careful  notes;  he  even 
made  a  very  bad  drawing,  but  the  Treasury  of 
Boondi  defied  pinning  down  before  the  public. 
There  was  a  gash  in  the  brown  flank  of  the 
Palace — and  this  gash  was  filled  with  people. 
A  broken  bees'  comb  with  the  whole  hive  busily 
at  work  on  repairs,  will  give  a  very  fair  idea 
of  this  extraordinary  place — the  Heart  of 
Boondi.  The  sunlight  was  very  vivid  without 
and  the  shadows  were  heavy  within,  so  that 
little  could  be  seen  except  this  clinging  mass  of 
humanity  huggling  like  maggots  in  a  carcase. 
A  stone  staircase  ran  up  to  a  rough  verandah 
built  out  of  the  wall,  and  in  the  wall  was  a 
cave-like  room,  the  guardian  of  whose  snowy- 
carpeted  depths  was  one  of  the  refined  financial 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  219 

classes,  a  man  with  very  small  hands  and  soft, 
low  voice.  He  was  girt  with  a  sword,  and  held 
authority  over  the  Durbar  funds.  He  referred 
the  Englishman  courteously  to  another  branch 
of  the  department,  to  find  which  necessitated  a 
blundering  progress  up  another  narrow  stair- 
case crowded  with  loungers  of  all  kinds.  Here 
everything  shone  from  constant  contact  of 
bare  feet  and  hurrying  bare  shoulders.  The 
staircase  was  the  thing  that,  seen  from  without, 
had  produced  the  bees'  comb  impression.  At 
the  top  was  a  long  verandah  shaded  from  the 
sun,  and  here  the  Boondi  Treasury  worked, 
under  the  guidance  of  a  grey-haired  old  man, 
whose  sword  lay  by  the  side  of  his  comfortably 
wadded  cushion.  He  controlled  twenty  or 
thirty  writers,  each  wrapped  round  a  huge, 
country  paper  account-book,  and  each  far  too 
busy  to  raise  his  eyes. 

The  babble  on  the  staircase  might  have  been 
the  noise  of  the  sea  so  far  as  these  men  were 
concerned.  It  ebbed  and  flowed  in  regular 
beats,  and  spread  out  far  into  the  courtyard 
below.  Now  and  again  the  click-click-click  of 
a  scabbard  tip  being  dragged  against  the  wall, 
cut  the  dead  sound  of  trampling  naked  feet,  and 
a  soldier  would  stumble  up  the  narrow  way 
into  the  sun-light.  He  was  received,  and  sent 


220          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

back  or  forward  by  a  knot  of  keen-eyed 
loungers,  who  seemed  to  act  as  a  buffer  be- 
tween the  peace  of  the  Secretariat  and  the 
pandemonium  of  the  Administrative.  Saises 
and  grass-cutters,  mahouts  of  elephants, 
brokers,  mahajurrs,  villagers  from  the  district, 
and  here  and  there  a  shock-headed  aborigine, 
swelled  the  mob  on  and  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs.  As  they  came  up,  they  met  the  buffer- 
men  who  spoke  in  low  voices,  and  appeared  to 
filter  them  according  to  their  merits.  Some 
were  sent  to  the  far  end  of  the  verandah,  where 
everything  melted  away  in  a  fresh  crowd  of 
dark  faces.  Others  were  sent  back,  and  joined 
the  detachment  shuffling  for  shoes  in  the 
chowk.  One  servant  of  the  Palace  withdrew 
himself  to  the  open,  underneath  the  verandah, 
and  there  sat  yapping  from  time  to  time  like 
a  hungry  dog : — "The  grass !  The  grass !  The 
grass!"  But  the  men  with  the  account-books 
never  stirred.  Other  men  knelt  down  in  front 
of  them  and  whispered.  And  they  bowed  their 
heads  gravely  and  made  entry  or  erasure,  turn- 
ing back  the  rustling  leaves.  Not  often  does 
a  reach  of  the  River  of  Life  so  present  itself 
that  it  can  without  alteration  be  transferred  to 
canvas.  But  the  Treasury  of  Boondi,  the  view 
up  the  long  verandah,  stood  complete  and  ready 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  221 

for  any  artist  who  cared  to  make  it  his  own. 
And  by  that  lighter  and  less  malicious  irony  of 
the  Fate  who  is  always  giving  nuts  to  those 
who  have  no  teeth,  the  picture  was  clinched  and 
brought  together  by  a  winking,  brass  hookah- 
bowl  of  quaint  design,  pitched  carelessly  upon 
a  roll  of  dull-red  cloth  full  in  the  foreground. 
The  faces  of  the  accountants  were  of  pale  gold, 
for  they  were  an  untanned  breed,  and  the  face 
of  the  old  man  their  controller  was  like  frosted 
silver. 

It  was  a  strange  Treasury,  but  no  other 
could  have  suited  the  Palace.  The  Englishman 
watched  open-mouthed,  blaming  himself  be- 
cause he  could  not  catch  the  meaning  of  the 
orders  given  to  the  flying  chaprassies,  nor  make 
anything  of  the  hum  in  the  verandah  and  the 
tumult  on  the  stairs.  The  old  man  took  the 
commonplace  Currency  Note  and  announced 
his  willingness  to  give  change  in  silver.  "We 
have  no  small  notes  here,"  he  said.  "They  are 
not  wanted.  In  a  little  while,  when  you  next 
bring  the  Honour  of  your  Presence  this  way, 
you  shall  find  the  silver." 

The  Englishman  was  taken  down  the  steps 
and  fell  into  the  arms  of  a  bristled  giant  who 
had  left  his  horse  in  the  courtyard,  and  the 
giant  spoke  at  length,  waving  his  arms  in  the 


£22 


air,  but  the  Englishman  could  not  understand 
him  and  dropped  into  the  hub-bub  at  the  Palace 
foot.     Except  the  main  lines  of  the  building 
there  is  nothing  strange  or  angular  about  it 
The  rush  of  people  seems  to  have  rounded  and 
softened  every  corner,  as  a  river  grinds  down 
boulders.     From  the  lowest  tier,  two  zigzags, 
all  of  rounded  stones  sunk  in  mortar,  took  the 
Englishman  to  a  gate  where  two  carved  ele- 
phants were  thrusting  at  each  other  over  the 
arch ;  and,  because  neither  he  nor  any  one  round 
him  could  give  the  gate  a  name,  he  called  it  the 
"Gate  of  the  Elephants."    Here  the  noise  from 
the  Treasury  was  softened,  and  entry  through 
the  gate  brought  him  into  a  well-known  world, 
the  drowsy  peace  of  a  King's  Palace.     There 
was   a   court-yard  surrounded  by   stables,   in 
which  were  kept  chosen  horses,  and  two  or 
three  saises  were  sleeping  in  the  sun.     There 
was  no  other  life  except  the  whirr  and  coo  of 
the  pigeons.     In  time — though  really  there  is 
no  such  a  thing  as  time  off  the  line  of  railway — 
an  official  appeared  begirt  with  the  skewer-like 
keys  that  open  the  native  bayonet  locks,  each 
from  six  inches  to  a  foot  long.    Where  was  the 
Raj  Mahal  in  which,  sixty-six  years  ago,  Tod 
formerly  installed  Ram  Singh,  "who  is  now  in 
his  eleventh  year,  fair  and  with  a  lively  intelli- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  223 

gent  cast  of  face"  ?  The  warden  made  no  an- 
swer, but  led  to  a  room,  overlooking  the  court- 
yard, in  which  two  armed  men  stood  before  an 
empty  throne  of  white  marble.  They  motioned 
silently  that  none  must  pass  immediately  before 
the  takht  of  the  King,  but  go  round,  keeping  to 
the  far  side  of  the  double  row  of  pillars.  Near 
the  walls  were  stone  slabs  pierced  to  take  the 
butts  of  long,  venomous,  black  bamboo  lances ; 
rude  coffers  were  disposed  about  the  room,  and 
ruder  sketches  of  Ganesh  adorned  the  walls. 
"The  men,"  said  the  warden,  "watch  here  day 
and  night  because  this  place  is  the  Rutton  Dau- 
lat."  That,  you  will  concede,  is  lucid  enough. 
He  who  does  not  understand  it,  may  go  to  for 
a  thick-headed  barbarian. 

From  the  Rutton  Daulat  the  warden  un- 
locked doors  that  led  into  a  hall  of  audience — 
the  Chutter  Mahal — built  by  Raja  Chutter  Lai, 
who  was  killed  more  than  two  hundred  years 
ago  in  the  latter  days  of  Shah  Jehan  for  whom 
he  fought.  Two  rooms,  each  supported  on 
double  rows  of  pillars,  flank  the  open  space, 
in  the  centre  of  which  is  a  marble  reservoir. 
Here  the  Englishman  looked  anxiously  for 
some  of  the  atrocities  of  the  West,  and  was 
pleased  to  find  that,  with  the  exception  of  a 
vase  of  artificial  flowers  and  a  clock,  both  hid 


224  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

in  mihrdbs,  there  was  nothing  that  jarred  with 
the  exquisite  pillars,  and  the  raw  blaze  of  col- 
our in  the  roofs  of  the  rooms.  In  the  middle 
of  these  impertinent  observations,  something 
sighed — sighed  like  a  distressed  ghost.  Un- 
accountable voices  are  at  all  times  unpleasant, 
especially  when  the  hearer  is  some  hundred 
feet  or  so  above  ground  in  an  unknown  Palace 
in  an  unknown  land.  A  gust  of  wind  had 
found  its  way  through  one  of  the  latticed  bal- 
conies, and  had  breathed  upon  a  thin  plate  of 
metal,  some  astrological  instrument,  slung 
gong-wise  on  a  tripod.  The  tone  was  as  soft 
as  that  of  an  Aeolian  harp,  and,  because  of  the 
surroundings,  infinitely  more  plaintive. 

There  was  an  inlaid  ivory  door,  set  in  lintel 
and  posts  crusted  with  looking-glass — all  ap- 
parently old  work.  This  opened  into  a  dark- 
ened room  where  there  were  gilt  and  silver 
charpoys,  and  portraits,  in  the  native  fashion, 
of  the  illustrious  dead  of  Boondi.  Beyond  the 
darkness  was  a  balcony  clinging  to  the  sheer 
side  of  the  Palace,  and  it  was  then  that  the 
Englishman  realised  to  what  a  height  he  had 
climbed  without  knowing  it.  He  looked  down 
upon  the  bustle  of  the  Treasury  and  the  stream 
of  life  flowing  into  and  out  of  the  Gate  of  the 
Fishes  where  the  big  nakarras  lie.  Lifting  his 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  225 

eyes,  he  saw  how  Boondi  City  had  built  itself, 
spreading  from  west  to  east  as  the  confined 
valley  became  too  narrow  and  the  years  more 
peaceable.  The  Boondi  hills  are  the  barrier 
that  separates  the  stony,  uneven  ground  near 
Deoli  from  the  flats  of  Kotah,  twenty  miles 
away.  From  the  Palace  balcony  the  road  to 
the  eye  is  clear  to  the  banks  of  the  Chumbul 
river,  which  was  the  Debatable  Ford  in  times 
gone  by  and  was  leaped,  as  all  rivers  with  any 
pretensions  to  a  pedigree  have  been,  by  more 
than  one  magic  horse.  Northward  and  easterly 
the  hills  run  out  to  Indurgarh,  and  southward 
and  westerly  to  territory  marked  "disputed"  on 
the  map  in  the  present  year  of  grace.  From 
this  balcony  the  Raja  can  see  to  the  limit  of  his 
territory  eastward,  like  the  good  King  of  Yves 
his  empire  is  all  under  his  hand.  He  is,  or  the 
Politicals  err,  that  same  Ram  Singh  who  was 
installed  by  Tod  in  1821,  and  for  whose  suc- 
cess in  killing  his  first  deer,  Tod  was,  by  the 
Queen-Mother  of  Boondi,  bidden  to  rejoice. 
To-day  the  people  of  Boondi  say : — "This  D'ur- 
bar  is  very  old,  so  old  that  few  men  remember 
its  beginning,  for  they  were  in  our  father's 
time."  It  is  related  also  of  Boondi  that,  on 
the  occasion  of  the  Queen's  Jubilee,  they  said 
proudly  that  their  ruler  had  reigned  for  sixty 


226          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

years,  and  he  was  a  man.  They  saw  nothing 
astonishing  in  the  fact  of  a  woman  having 
reigned  for  fifty.  History  does  not  say 
whether  they  jubilated;  for  there  are  no  Eng- 
lishmen in  Boondi  to  write  accounts  of  demon- 
strations and  foundation-stones  laying  to  the 
daily  newspapers,  and  then  Boondi  is  very,  very 
small.  In  the  early  morning  you  may  see  a 
man  being  pantingly  chased  out  of  the  city  by 
another  man  with  a  naked  sword.  This  is  the 
dak  and  the  dak  guard;  and  the  effect  is  as 
though  runner  and  swordsman  lay  under  a 
doom — the  one  to  fly  with  the  fear  of  death 
always  before  him,  as  men  fly  in  dreams,  and 
the  other  to  perpetually  fail  of  his  revenge. 
But  this  leaves  us  still  in  the  swallow  nest 
balcony. 

The  warden  unlocked  more  doors  and  led  the 
Englishman  still  higher,  but  into  a  garden — a 
heavily  timbered  garden  with  a  tank  for  gold 
fish  in  the  midst!  For  once  the  impassive  fol- 
lowing smiled  when  they  saw  that  the  English- 
man was  impressed.  "This,"  said  they,  "is  the 
Rang  Bilas."  "But  who  made  it?"  "Who 
knows?  It  was  made  long  ago."  The  Eng- 
lishman looked  over  the  garden-wall,  a  foot 
high  parapet,  and  shuddered.  There  was  only 
the  flat  side  of  the  Palace,  and  a  drop  on  to  the 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          227 

stones  of  the  zigzags  scores  of  feet  below. 
Above  him  was  the  riven  hillside  and  the  de- 
caying wall  of  Taragarh,  and  behind  him  this 
fair  garden,  hung  like  Mahomet's  coffin,  full  of 
the  noise  of  birds  and  the  talking  of  the  wind 
in  the  branches.  The  warden  entered  into  a 
lengthy  explanation  of  the  nature  of  the  delu- 
sion, showing  how — but  he  was  stopped  before 
he  had  finished.  His  listener  did  not  want  to 
know  "how  the  trick  was  done."  Here  was  the 
garden,  and  there  were  three  or  four  storeys 
climbed  to  reach  to  it.  Bus.  At  one  end  of 
the  garden  was  a  small  room,  under  treatment 
by  native  artists  who  were  painting  the  panels 
with  historical  pictures,  in  distemper.  Theirs 
was  florid  polychromatic  art,  but  skirting  the 
floor  was  a  series  of  frescoes  in  red,  black  and 
white,  of  combats  with  elephants,  bold  and 
temperate  as  good  German  work.  They  were 
worn  and  defaced  in  places;  but  the  hand  of 
some  bye-gone  limner,  who  did  not  know  how 
to  waste  a  line,  showed  under  the  bruises  and 
scratches,  and  put  the  newer  work  to  shame. 

Here  the  tour  of  the  Palace  ended;  and  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  Englishman  had 
not  gone  the  depth  of  three  rooms  into  one 
flank.  Acres  of  building  lay  to  the  right  of 
him,  and  above  the  lines  of  the  terraces  he  could 


228  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

see  the  tops  of  green  trees.  "Who  knew  how 
many  gardens,  such  as  the  Rang  Bilas,  were  to 
be  found  in  the  Palace?"  No  one  answered 
directly,  but  all  said  that  there  were  many.  The 
warden  gathered  up  his  keys,  and  locking  each 
door  behind  him  as  he  passed,  led  the  way  down 
to  earth.  But  before  he  had  crossed  the  garden, 
the  Englishman  heard,  deep  down  in  the  bowels 
of  the  Palace,  a  woman's  voice  singing,  and  the 
voice  rang  as  do  voices  in  caves.  All  Palaces  in 
India  excepting  dead  ones,  such  as  that  of  Am- 
ber, are  full  of  eyes.  In  some,  as  has  been  said, 
the  idea  of  being  watched  is  stronger  than  in 
others.  In  Boondi  Palace  it  was  overpowering 
— being  far  worse  than  in  the  green  shuttered 
corridors  of  Jodhpur.  There  were  trap-doors 
on  the  tops  of  terraces,  and  windows  veiled  in 
foliage,  and  bull's  eyes  set  low  in  unexpected 
walls,  and  many  other  peep-holes  and  places  of 
vantage.  In  the  end,  the  Englishman  looked 
devoutly  at  the  floor,  but  when  the  voice  of  the 
woman  came  up  from  under  his  feet,  he  felt 
that  there  was  nothing  left  for  him  but  to  go. 
Yet,  excepting  only  this  voice,  there  was  deep 
silence  everywhere,  and  nothing  could  be  seen. 
The  warden  returned  to  the  Chutter  Mahal  to 
pick  up  a  lost  key.  The  brass  table  of  the 
planets  was  sighing  softly  to  itself  as  it  swung 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  229 

to  and  fro  in  the  wind.  That  was  the  last  view 
of  the  interior  of  the  Palace,  the  empty  court, 
and  the  swinging  sighing  jantar. 

About  two  hours  afterwards,  when  he  had 
reached  the  other  side  of  the  valley  and  seen  the 
full  extent  of  the  buildings,  the  Englishman  be- 
gan to  realise  first  that  he  had  not  been  taken 
through  one-tenth  of  the  Palace;  and  secondly, 
that  he  would  do  well  to  measure  its  extent  by 
acres,  in  preference  to  meaner  measures.  But 
what  made  him  blush  hotly,  all  alone  among 
the  tombs  on  the  hill  side,  was  the  idea  that  he 
with  his  ridiculous  demands  for  eggs,  firewood, 
and  sweet  drinking  water,  should  have  clattered 
and  chattered  through  any  part  of  it  at  all. 

He  began  to  understand  why  Boondi  does 
not  encourage  Englishmen. 


XVIII. 


Of  the  Uncivilised  Night  and  the  Departure  to 
Things  Civilised.  Showing  how  a  Friend 
may  keep  an  Appointment  too  well. 

C4T    ET  us  go  hence,  my  songs, she  will  not 

•*— '  hear.  Let  us  go  hence  together  without 
fear!"  But  Ram  Baksh  the  irrepressible  sang 
it  in  altogether  a  baser  key.  He  came  by  night 
to  the  pavilion  on  the  lake,  while  the  sepoys 
were  cooking  their  fish,  and  reiterated  his 
whine  about  the  devildom  of  the  country  into 
whch  the  Englishman  had  dragged  him. 
Padre  Martum  Sahib  would  never  have  thus 
treated  the  owner  of  sixteen  horses,  all  fast  and 
big  ones,  and  eight  superior  *shutin-tongas." 
"Let  us  get  away,"  said  Ram  Baksh.  "You 
are  not  here  for  shikar,  and  the  water  is  very 
bad."  It  was  indeed,  except  when  taken  from 
the  lake,  and  then  it  only  tasted  fishy.  "We 
will  go,  Ram  Baksh,"  said  the  Englishman. 
"We  will  go  in  the  very  early  morning,  and  in 
the  meantime  here  is  fish  to  stay  your  stomach 
with." 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          231 

When  a  transparent  kanat,  which  fails  by 
three  feet  to  reach  ceiling  or  floor,  is  the  only 
bar  between  the  East  and  the  West,  he  would 
be  a  churl  indeed  who  stood  upon  "invidious 
race  distinctions."  The  Englishman  went  out 
and  fraternised  with  the  Military — the  four- 
rupee  soldiers  of  Boondi  who  guarded  him. 
They  were  armed,  one  with  an  old  Tower  mus- 
ket crazy  as  to  nipple  and  hammer,  one  with  a 
native-made  smooth-bore,  and  one  with  a  com- 
posite contrivance — English  sporting  muzzle- 
loader  stock  with  a  compartment  for  a  jointed 
cleaning-rod,  and  hammered  octagonal  native 
barrel,  wire-fastened,  with  a  tuft  of  cotton  on 
the  foresight.  All  three  guns  were  loaded,  and 
the  owners  were  very  proud  of  them.  They 
were  simple  folk,  these  men  at  arms,  with  an 
inordinate  appetite  for  broiled  fish.  They  were 
not  always  soldiers  they  explained.  They  culti- 
vated their  crops  until  wanted  for  any  duty  that 
might  turn  up.  They  were  paid,  now  and 
again,  at  intervals,  but  they  were  paid  in  coin 
and  not  in  kind. 

The  munshis  and  the  vakils  and  the  runners 
had  departed  after  seeing  that  the  Englishman 
was  safe  for  the  night,  so  the  freedom  of  the 
little  gathering  on  the  bund  was  unrestrained. 
The  chowkidar  came  out  of  his  cave  into  the 


232  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

firelight.  Warm  wood  ashes,  by  the  way,  like 
Epps's  cocoa,  are  "grateful  and  comforting"  to 
cold  toes.  He  took  a  fish  and  incontinently 
choked,  for  he  was  a  feeble  old  man.  Set  right 
again,  he  launched  into  a  very  long  and  quite 
unintelligible  story  while  the  sepoys  said  rev- 
erently:— "He  is  an  old  man  and  remembers 
many  things."  As  he  babbled,  the  night  shut  in 
upon  the  lake  and  the  valley  of  Boondi.  The 
last  cows  were  driven  into  the  water  for  their 
evening  drink,  the  waterfowl  and  the  monkeys 
went  to  bed,  and  the  stars  came  out  and  made 
a  new  firmament  in  the  untroubled  bosom  of 
the  lake.  The  light  of  the  fire  showed  the  ruled 
line  of  the  bund  springing  out  of  the  soft  dark- 
ness of  the  wooded  hill  on  the  left  and  disap- 
pearing into  the  solid  darkness  of  the  bare  hill 
on  the  right.  Below  the  bund  a  man  cried 
aloud  to  keep  wandering  pigs  from  the  gardens 
whose  tree-tops  rose  to  a  level  with  the  bund- 
edge.  Beyond  the  trees  all  was  swaddled  in 
gloom.  When  the  gentle  buzz  of  the  unseen 
city  died  out,  it  seemed  as  though  the  bund 
were  the  very  Swordwide  Bridge  that  runs,  as 
every  one  knows,  between  this  world  and  the 
next.  The  water  lapped  and  muttered,  and 
now  and  again  a  fish  jumped,  with  the  shatter 
of  broken  glass,  blurring  the  peace  of  the  re- 
flected heavens. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  233 

"And  duller  should  I  be  than  some  fat  weed 
That  rots  itself  at  ease  on  Lethe's  wharf." 

The  poet  who  wrote  those  lines  knew  nothing 
whatever  of  Lethe's  wharf.  The  Englishman 
had  found  it,  and  it  seemed  to  him,  at  that  hour 
and  in  that  place,  that  it  would  be  good  and  de- 
sirable never  to  return  to  the  Commissioners 
and  the  Deputy  Commissioners  any  more,  but 
to  lie  at  ease  on  the  warm  sunlit  bund  by  day, 
and,  at  night,  near  a  shadow-breeding  fire,  to 
listen  for  the  strangled  voices  and  whispers  of 
the  darkness  in  the  hills;  thus  after  as  long  a 
life  as  the  chowkidar's,  dying  easily  and  pleas- 
antly, and  being  buried  in  a  red  tomb  on  the 
borders  of  the  lake.  Surely  no  one  would  come 
to  reclaim  him,  across  those  weary,  weary  miles 
of  rock-strewn  road.  . .  ."And  this,"  said  the 
chowkidar,  raising  his  voice  to  enforce  atten- 
tion, "is  true  talk.  Everybody  knows  it,  and 
now  the  Sahib  knows  it.  I  am  an  old  man." 
He  fell  asleep  at  once,  with  his  hand  on  the 
chillam  that  was  doing  duty  for  a  whole  hukka 
among  the  company.  He  had  been  talking  for 
nearly  a  quarter  of  an  hour. 

See  how  great  a  man  is  the  true  novelist! 
Six  or  seven  thousand  miles  away,  Walter 
Besant  of  the  Golden  Pen  had  created  Mr. 
Maliphant — the  ancient  of  figureheads,  in  All 


234  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

Sorts  and  Conditions  of  Men,  and  here,  in 
Boondi,  the  Englishman  had  found  Mr.  Mali- 
phant  in  the  withered  flesh.  So  he  drank  Wal- 
ter Besant's  health  in  the  water  of  the  Burra 
Taloa.  One  of  the  sepoys  turned  himself 
round,  with  a  clatter  of  accoutrements,  shifted 
his  blanket  under  his  elbow,  and  told  a  tale. 
It  had  something  to  do  with  his  khet,  and  a 
gunna  which  certainly  was  not  sugar-cane.  It 
was  elusive.  At  times  it  seemed  that  it  was  a 
woman,  then  changed  to  a  right  of  way,  and 
lastly  appeared  to  be  a  tax;  but  the  more  he 
attempted  to  get  at  its  meaning  through  the 
curious  patois  in  which  its  doings  or  its  merits 
were  enveloped,  the  more  dazed  the  Englishman 
became.  None  the  less  the  story  was  a  fine 
one,  embellished  with  much  dramatic  gesture 
which  told  powerfully  against  the  fire-light. 
Then  the  second  sepoy,  who  had  been  enjoying 
the  chillam  all  the  time,  told  a  tale,  the  purport 
of  which  was  that  the  dead  in  the  tombs  around 
the  lake  were  wont  to  get  up  of  nights  and 
shikar.  This  was  a  fine  and  ghostly  story; 
and  its  dismal  effect  was  much  heightened  by 
some  clamour  of  the  night  far  up  the  lake  be- 
yond the  floor  of  stars. 

The  third  sepoy  said  nothing.  He  had  eaten 
too  much  fish  and  was  fast  asleep  by  the  side 
of  the  chowkidar. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          235 

They  were  all  Mahomedans,  and  conse- 
quently all  easy  to  deal  with.  A  Hindu  is  an 
excellent  person,  but  .  .  .  but  .  .  .  there  is 
no  knowing  what  is  in  his  heart,  and  he  is 
hedged  about  with  so  many  strange  observ- 
ances. 

The  Hindu  or  Mahomedan  bent,  which  each 
Englishman's  mind  must  take  before  he  has 
been  three  years  in  the  country  is,  of  course, 
influenced  by  Province  or  Presidency.  In 
Rajputana  generally,  the  Political  swears  by 
the  Hindu,  and  holds  that  the  Mahomedan 
is  untrustworthy.  But  a  man  who  will  eat 
with  you  and  take  your  tobacco,  sinking  the 
fiction  that  it  has  been  doctored  with  shrab, 
cannot  be  very  bad  after  all. 

That  night  when  the  tales  were  all  told  and 
the  guard,  bless  them,  were  snoring  peaceably 
in  the  starlight,  a  man  came  stealthily  into  the 
enclosure  of  kanats  and  woke  the  Englishman 
by  muttering  Sahib,  Sahib  in  his  ear.  It  was 
no  robber,  but  some  poor  devil  with  a  petition — ; 
a  grimy,  welted  paper.  He  was  absolutely  un- 
intelligible, and  additionally  so  in  that  he 
stammered  almost  to  dumbness.  He  stood  by 
the  bed,  alternately  bowing  to  the  earth  and 
standing  erect,  his  arms  spread  aloft,  and  his 
whole  body  working  as  he  tried  to  force  out 


236  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

some  rebellious  word  in  a  key  that  should  not 
wake  the  men  without.  What  could  the  Eng- 
lishman do?  He  was  nc  Government  servant, 
and  had  no  concern  with  urzis.  It  was  laugh- 
able to  lie  in  a  warm  bed  and  watch  this  un- 
fortunate heathen,  clicking  and  choking  and 
gasping  in  his  desperate  desire  to  make  the 
Sahib  understand.  It  was  also  unpleasantly 
pathetic,  and  the  listener  found  himself  as 
blindly  striving  to  catch  the  meaning  as  the 
pleader  to  make  himself  comprehend.  But  it 
was  no  use;  and  in  the  end  the  man  departed 
as  he  had  come — bowed,  abject,  and  unintelli- 
gible. 

Let  every  word  written  against  Ganesh  be 
rescinded.  It  was  by  his  ordering  that  the  Eng- 
lishman saw  such  a  dawn  on  the  Burra  Taloa 
as  he  had  never  before  set  eyes  on.  Every  fair 
morning  is  a  reprint,  blurred,  perhaps,  of  the 
opening  of  the  First  Day;  but  this  splendour 
was  a  thing  to  be  put  aside  from  all  other  days 
and  remembered.  The  stars  had  no  fire  in  them 
and  the  fish  had  stopped  jumping,  when  the 
black  water  of  the  lake  paled  and  grew  grey. 
While  he  watched,  it  seemed  to  the  English- 
man that  some  voice  on  the  hills  were  intoning 
the  first  verses  of  Genesis.  The  grey  light  , 
moved  on  the  face  of  the  waters  till,  with  no 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  237 

interval,  a  blood-red  glare  shot  up  from  the 
horizon  and,  inky  black  against  the  intense  red, 
a  giant  crane  floated  out  towards  the  sun.  in 
the  still  shadowed  city  the  great  Palace  drum 
boomed  and  throbbed  to  show  that  the  gates 
were  open,  while  the  dawn  swept  up  the  valley 
and  made  all  things  clear.  The  blind  man  who 
said: — "The  blast  of  a  trumpet  is  red"  spoke 
only  the  truth.  The  breaking  of  the  red  dawn 
is  like  the  blast  of  a  trumpet. 

"What,"  said  the  chowkidar,  picking  the 
ashes  of  the  overnight  fire  out  of  his  beard, 
"what,  I  say,  are  five  eggs  or  twelve  eggs  to 
such  a  Raj  as  ours?  What  also  are  fowls — 
what  are" — . . .  ."There  was  no  talk  of  fowls. 
Where  is  the  fowl-man  from  whom  you  got 
the  eggs?"  "He  is  here.  No,  he  is  there.  I 
do  not  know.  I  am  an  old  man,  and  I  and  the 
Raj  supply  everything  without  price.  The 
murghiwalla  will  be  paid  by  the  State — liber- 
ally paid.  Let  the  Sahib  be  happy!  Woihl 
Wah!" 

Experience  of  beegar  in  Himalayan  villages 
had  made  the  Englishman  very  tender  in  rais- 
ing supplies  that  were  given  gratis;  but  the 
murghiwalla  could  not  be  found,  and  the  value 
of  his  wares  was,  later,  paid  to  Ganesh — Gan- 
esh  of  Situr,  for  that  is  the  name  of  the  vil- 


238          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

lage  full  of  priests,  through  which  the  Eng- 
lishman had  passed  in  ignorance  two  days  be- 
fore. A  double  handful  of  sweet  smelling 
flowers  made  the  receipt. 

Boondi  was  wide  awake  before  half -past 
seven  in  the  morning.  Her  hunters,  on  foot 
and  on  horse,  were  riling  towards  the  Deoli 
Gate  to  go  shikarring.  They  would  hunt  tiger 
and  deer  they  said,  even  with  matchlocks  and 
muzzle-loaders  as  uncouth  as  those  the  Sahib 
saw.  They  were  a  merry  company  and  chaffed 
the  Quarter-Guard  at  the  gate  unmercifully 
when  a  bullock-cart,  laden  with  the  cases  of 
the  "Batoum  Naphtha  and  Oil  Company" 
blocked  the  road.  One  of  them  had  been  a 
soldier  of  the  Queen,  and,  excited  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  Sahib,  did  so  rebuke  and  badger 
the  Quarter-Guard  for  their  slovenliness  that 
they  threatened  to  come  out  of  the  barracks 
and  destroy  him. 

So,  after  one  last  look  at  the  Palace  high  up 
the  hill-side,  the  Englishman  was  borne  away 
along  the  Deoli  road.  The  peculiarity  of 
Boondi  is  the  peculiarity  of  the  covered  pitfall. 
One  does  not  see  it  till  one  falls  into  it.  A 
quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  gate,  it  and  its  Pal- 
ace were  invisible.  The  runners  who  had  chiv- 
alrously volunteered  to  protect  the  wanderer 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          239 

against  possible  Dacoits  had  been  satisfactorily 
disposed  of,  and  all  was  peace  and  unruffled 
loaferdom.  But  the  Englishman  was  grieved 
at  heart.  He  had  fallen  in  love  with  Boondi 
the  beautiful,  and  believed  that  he  would  never 
again  see  anything  half  c-*o  fair.  The  utter 
untouchedness  of  the  town  was  one-half  the 
the  charm  and  its  associations  the  other.  Read 
Tod,  who  is  far  too  good  to  be  chipped  or 
sampled,  read  Tod  luxuriously  on  the  bund  of 
Burra  Talao,  and  the  spirit  of  the  place  will 
enter  you  and  you  will  be  happy. 

To  enjoy  life  thoroughly,  haste  and  bustle 
must  be  abandoned.  Ram  Baksh  has  said  that 
Englishmen  are  always  dikking  to  go  forward, 
and  for  this  reason,  though  beyond  doubt 
they  pay  well  and  readily,  are  not  wise  men. 
He  gave  utterance  to  this  philosophy  after  he 
had  mistaken  his  road  and  pulled  up  in  what 
must  have  been  a  disused  quarry  hard  by  a 
cane-field.  There  were  patches  and  pockets  of 
cultivation  along  the  rocky  road,  where  men 
grew  cotton,  til,  chillies,  tobacco,  and  sugar- 
cane. "I  will  get  you  sugar-cane,"  said  Ram 
Baksh.  "Then  we  will  go  forward,  and  per- 
haps some  of  these  jungly  fools  will  tell  us 
where  the  road  is."  A  "jungly  fool,"  a  tender 
of  goats,  did  in  time  appear,  but  there  was  no 


240  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

hurry;  the  sugar-cane  was  sweet  and  purple 
and  the  sun  warm. 

The  Englishman  lay  out  at  high  noon  on 
the  crest  of  a  rolling  upland  crowned  with 
rock,  and  heard,  as  a  loafer  had  told  him  he 
would  hear,  the  "set  of  the  day,"  which  is  as 
easily  discernible  as  the  change  of  tone  between 
the  rising  and  falling  tide.  At  a  certain  hour 
the  impetus  of  the  morning  dies  out,  and  all 
things,  living  and  inanimate,  turn  their 
thoughts  to  the  prophecy  of  the  coming  night. 
The  little  wandering  breezes  drop  for  a  time, 
and,  when  they  blow  afresh,  bring  the  message. 
The  "set  of  the  day,"  as  the  loafer  said,  has 
changed,  the  machinery  is  beginning  to  run 
down,  the  unseen  tides  of  the  air  are  falling. 
The  moment  of  the  change  can  only  be  felt  in 
the  open  and  in  touch  with  the  earth,  and  once 
discovered,  seems  to  place  the  finder  in  deep 
accord  and  fellowship  with  all  things  on  the 
earth.  Perhaps  this  is  why  the  genuine  loafer, 
though  "frequently  drunk,"  is  "always  polite 
to  the  stranger,"  and  shows  such  a  genial  tol- 
erance towards  the  weaknesses  of  mankind, 
black,  white,  or  brown. 

In  the  evening  when  the  jackals  were  scut- 
tling across  the  roads  and  the  cranes  had  gone 
to  roost,  came  Deoli  the  desolate,  and  an  un- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  241 

pleasant  meeting.  Six  days  away  from  his 
kind  had  bred  in  a  Cockney  heart  a  great  de- 
sire to  see  an  Englishman  again.  An  elabo- 
rate loaf  through  the  cantonment — fifteen  min- 
utes' walk  from  end  to  end — showed  only  one 
distant  dog-cart  and  a  small  English  child 
with  an  ayah.  There  was  grass  in  the  soldier- 
ly straight  roads,  and  some  of  the  cross-cuts 
had  never  been  used  at  all  from  the  days 
when  the  cantonment  had  been  first  laid  out. 
In  the  western  corner  lay  the  cemetery — the 
only  carefully-tended  and  newly-whitewashed 
thing  in  this  God-forgotten  place.  Some  years 
ago  a  man  had  said  good-bye  to  the  English- 
man ;  adding  cheerily : — "We  shall  meet  again. 
The  world's  a  very  little  place  y'know."  His 
prophecy  was  a  true  one,  for  the  two  met 
indeed,  but  the  prophet  was  lying  in  Deoli 
Cemetery  near  the  well,  which  is  decorated  so 
ecclesiastically  with  funeral  urns.  Truly  the 
world  is  a  very  little  place  that  a  man  should  so 
stumble  upon  dead  acquaintances  when  he  goes 
abroad. 


THE  LAST. 


Comes  back  to  the  Railway,  after  Reflections 
on  the  Management  of  the  Empire;  and  so 
Home  again,  with  apology  to  all  who  have 
read  thus  far. 

TN  the  morning  the  tonga  rattled  past  Deoli 
-•-  Cemetery  into  the  open,  where  the  Deoli 
Irregulars  were  drilling.  They  marked  the 
beginning  of  civilisation  and  white  shirts;  for 
which  reason  they  seemed  altogether  detest- 
able. Yet  another  day's  jolting,  enlivened  by 
the  philosophy  of  Ram  Baksh,  and  then  came 
Nasirabad.  The  last  pair  of  ponies  suggested 
serious  thought.  They  had  covered  eighteen 
miles  at  an  average  speed  of  eight  miles  an 
hour,  and  were  well  conditioned  little  rats. 
"A  Colonel  Sahib  gave  me  this  one  for  bak- 
shish," said  Ram  Baksh,  flicking  the  near  one. 
"It  was  his  baba's  pony.  The  baba  was  five 
years  old.  When  he  went  away,  the  Colonel 
Sahib  said: — 'Ram  Baksh,  you  are  a  good 
man.  Never  have  I  seen  such  a  good  man. 
This  horse  is  yours.' '  Ram  Baksh  was  get- 
ting a  horse's  work  out  of  a  child's  pony. 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  243 

Surely  we  in  India  work  the  land  much  as  the 
Colonel  Sahib  worked  his  son's  mount;  mak- 
ing it  do  a  child's  work  when  so  much  more 
can  be  screwed  out  of  it.  A  native  and  a 
native  State  deal  otherwise  with  horse  and 
holding.  Perhaps  our  extreme  scrupulousness 
in  handling  may  be  Statecraft,  but,  after  even 
a  short  sojourn  in  places  which  are  dealt  with 
not  so  tenderly,  it  seems  absurd.  There  are 
States  where  things  are  done,  and  done  with- 
out protest,  that  would  make  the  hair  of  the 
educated  native  stand  on  end  with  horror. 
These  things  are  of  course  not  expedient  to 
write;  because  their  publication  would  give  a 
great  deal  of  unnecessary  pain  and  heart- 
searching  to  estimable  native  administrators 
who  have  the  hope  of  a  Star  before  their  eyes, 
and  would  not  better  matters  in  the  least. 

Note  this  fact  though.  With  the  exception 
of  such  journals  as,  occupying  a  central  po- 
sition in  British  territory,  levy  blackmail  from 
the  neighbouring  States,  there  are  no  inde- 
pendent papers  in  Rajputana.  A  King  may 
start  a  weekly,  to  encourage  a  taste  for  San- 
skrit and  high  Hindi,  or  a  Prince  may  create 
a  Court  Chronicle;  but  that  is  all.  A  "free 
press"  is  not  allowed,  and  this  the  native  jour- 
nalist knows.  With  good  management  he  can, 


244  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

keeping  under  the  shadow  of  our  flag,  raise 
two  hundred  rupees  from  a  big  man  here,  and 
five  hundred  from  a  rich  man  there,  but  he 
does  not  establish  himself  across  the  Border. 
To  one  who  has  reason  to  hold  a  stubborn  dis- 
belief in  even  the  elementary  morality  of  the 
native  press,  this  bashfulness  and  lack  of  enter- 
prise is  amusing.  But  to  return  to  the  over- 
the-way  administrations.  There  is  nothing 
exactly  wrong  in  the  methods  of  government 
that  are  overlaid  with  English  terms  and  forms. 
They  are  vigorous,  in  certain  points,  and  where 
they  are  not  vigorous,  there  is  a  cheery  happy- 
go-luckiness  about  the  arrangement  that  must 
be  seen  to  be  understood.  The  shift  and  play 
of  a  man's  fortune  across  the  Border  is  as  sud- 
den as  anything  in  the  days  of  Haroun-al- 
Raschid  of  blessed  memory,  and  there  are 
stories,  to  be  got  for  the  unearthing,  as  wild 
and  as  improbable  as  those  in  the  Thousand 
and  One  Nights.  Most  impressive  of  all  is  the 
way  in  which  the  country  is  "used,"  and  its 
elasticity  under  pressure.  In  the  good  old  days 
the  Durbar  raised  everything  it  could  from  the 
people,  and  the  King  spent  as  much  as  ever  he 
could  on  his  personal  pleasures.  Now  the  insti- 
tution of  the  Political  has  stopped  the  grab- 
bing, for  which,  by  the  way,  some  of  the  mon- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  245 

archs  are  not  in  the  least  grateful — and 
smoothed  the  outward  face  of  things.  But 
there  is  still  a  difference,  and  such  a  difference, 
between  our  ways  and  the  ways  of  the  other 
places.  A  year  spent  among  native  States 
ought  to  send  a  man  back  to  the  Decencies  and 
the  Law  Courts  and  the  Rights  of  the  Subject 
with  a  supreme  contempt  for  those  who  rave 
about  the  oppressions  of  the  brutal  bureaucrat. 
One  month  nearly  taught  an  average  English- 
man that  it  was  the  proper  thing  to  smite  any- 
body of  mean  aspect  and  obstructive  tendencies 
on  the  mouth  with  a  shoe.  Hear  what  an  in- 
telligent loafer  said.  His  words  are  at  least  as 
valuable  as  these  babblings.  He  was,  as  usual, 
wonderfully  drunk,  and  the  gift  of  speech  came 
down  upon  him.  The  conversation — he  was  a 
great  politician  this  loafer — had  turned  on  the 
poverty  of  India :— "Poor !"  said  he.  "Of 
course  it's  poor.  Oh  yes!  D — d  poor!  And 
I'm  poor,  an'  you're  poor,  altogether.  Do  you 
expect  people  will  give  you  money  without  you 
ask  'em?  No.  I  tell  you,  Sir,  there's  enough 
money  in  India  to  pave  Hell  with  if  you  could 
only  get  at  it.  I've  kep'  servants  in  my  day. 
Did  they  ever  leave  me  without  a  hundred  or  a 
hundred  and  fifty  put  by — and  never  touched  ? 
You  mark  that.  Does  any  black  man  who  has 


246          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

been  in  Guv'ment  service  go  away  without  hun- 
dreds an'  hundreds  put  by — and  never  touched  ? 
You  mark  that.  Money!  The  place  stinks 
o'  money — just  kept  out  o'  sight.  D'  you  ever 
know  a  native  that  didn't  say  Garib  admif 
They've  been  saying  Garib  admi  so  long  that 
the  Guv'ment  learns  to  believe  'em,  and  now 
they're  all  bein'  treated  as  though  they  was 
paupers.  I'm  a  pauper,  an'  you're  a  pauper — 
we  'aven't  got  anything  hid  in  the  ground — 
an'  so's  every  white  man  in  this  forsaken  coun- 
try. But  the  Injian  he's  a  rich  man.  How  do 
I  know?  Because  I've  tramped  on  foot,  or 
warrant  pretty  well  from  one  end  of  the  place 
to  the  other,  an'  I  know  what  I'm  talkin'  about, 
and  this  ere  Guv'ment  goes  peckin'  an'  fiddlin' 
over  its  tuppenny-ha'penny  little  taxes  as  if  it 
was  afraid.  Which  it  is.  You  see  how  they  do 

things  in .     It's  six  sowars  here,  and  ten 

sowars  there,  and — 'Pay  up,  you  brutes,  or 
we'll  pull  your  ears  over  your  head.'  And 
when  they've  taken  all  they  can  get,  the  head- 
man, he  says: — 'This  is  a  dashed  poor  yield. 
I'll  come  again.'  Of  course  the  people  digs-up 
something  out  of  the  ground,  and  they  pay.  I 
know  the  way  it's  done,  and  that's  the  way  to 
do  it.  You  can't  go  to  an  Injian  an'  say: — 
'Look  here.  Can  you  pay  me  five  rupees  ?'  He 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE          247 

says : — 'Garib  adnii,'  of  course,  an'  would  say  it 
if  he  was  as  rich  as  a  banker.  But  if  you  send 
half  a  dozen  sowars  at  him  and  shift  the  thatch 
off  of  his  roof,  he'll  pay.  Guv'ment  can't  do 
that.  I  don't  suppose  it  could.  There  is  no 
reason  why  it  shouldn't.  But  it  might  do  some- 
thing like  it,  to  show  that  it  wasn't  going  to 
have  no  nonsense.  Why,  I'd  undertake  to  raise 
a  hundred  million — what  am  I  talking  of? — a 
hundred  and  fifty  million  pounds  from  this 
country  per  annum,  and  it  wouldn't  be  strained 
then.  One  hundred  and  fifty  millions  you 
could  raise  as  easy  as  paint,  if  you  just  made 
these  ere  Injians  understand  that  they  had  to 
pay  an'  make  no  bones  about  it.  It's  enough  to 

make  a  man  sick  to  go  in  over  yonder  to 

and  see  what  they  do ;  and  then  come  back  an' 
see  what  we  do.  Perfectly  sickenin'  it  is. 
Borrer  money!  Why  the  country  could  pay 
herself  an'  everything  she  wants,  if  she  was 
only  made  to  do  it.  It's  this  bloomin'  Garib 
admi  swindle  that's  been  going  on  all  these 
years,  that  has  made  fools  o'  the  Guv'ment." 
Then  he  became  egoistical,  this  ragged  ruffian 
who  conceived  that  he  knew  the  road  to  il- 
limitable wealth,  and  told  the  story  of  his  life, 
interspersed  with  anecdotes  that  would  blister 
the  paper  they  were  written  on.  But  through 


248  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

all  his  ravings,  he  stuck  to  his  hundred-and- 
fifty-million-theory,  and  though  the  listener 
dissented  from  him  and  the  brutal  cruelty  with 
which  his  views  were  stated,  an  unscientific  im- 
pression remained  and  was  not  to  be  shaken  off. 
Across  the  Border  one  feels  that  the  country  is 
being  used,  exploited,  "made  to  sit  up,"  so  to 
speak.  In  our  territories  the  feeling  is  equally 
strong  of  wealth  "just  round  the  corner,"  as 
the  loafer  said,  and  the  people  wrapped  up  in 
cotton  wool  and  ungetatable.  Will  any  man, 
who  really  knows  something  of  a  little  piece  of 
India  and  has  not  the  fear  of  running  counter 
to  custom  before  his  eyes,  explain  how  this  im- 
pression is  produced,  and  why  it  is  an  erroneous 
one?  This  digression  has  taken  us  far  from 
the  child's  pony  of  Ram  Baksh. 

Nasirabad  marked  the  end  of  the  English- 
man's holiday,  and  there  was  sorrow  in  his 
heart.  "Come  back  again,"  said  Ram  Baksh 
cheerfully,  "and  bring  a  gun  with  you.  Then 
I'll  take  you  to  Gungra,  and  I'll  drive  you  my- 
self. Drive  you  just  as  well  as  I've  driven 
these  four  days  past."  An  amicable  open- 
minded  soul  was  Ram  Baksh.  May  his  tongas 
never  grow  less. 

"This  'ere  Burma  fever  is  a  bad  thing  to 
have.  It's  pulled  me  down  awful;  an'  now  I 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  249 

am  going  to  Peshawar.    Are  you  the  Station- 
master?"      It    was    Thomas — white    cheeked, 
sunken-eyed,  drawn-mouthed  Thomas — travel- 
ling from  Nasirabad  to  Peshawar  on  pass ;  and 
with  him  was  a  Corporal  new  to  his  stripes  and 
doing  station  duty.    Every  Thomas  is  interest- 
ing, except  when  he  is  too  drunk  to  speak. 
This   Thomas   was   an   enthusiast.      He   had 
volunteered,    from    a    Home-going    regiment 
shattered  by  Burma  fever,  into  a  regiment  at 
Peshawar,  had  broken  down  at  Nasirabad  on 
his   way   up   with   his   draft,    and    was   now 
journeying  into  the  unknown  to  pick  up  an- 
other medal.    "There's  sure  to  be  something  on 
the  Frontier,"  said  this  gaunt,  haggard  boy — 
he  was  little  more,  though  he  reckoned  four 
years'   service  and  considered   himself   some- 
body.    "When  there's  anything  going,  Pesha- 
war's the  place  to  be  in,  they  tell  me ;  but  I  hear 
we  shall  have  to  march  down  to  Calcutta  in 
no  time."    The  Corporal  was  a  little  man  and 
showed  his  friend  off  with  great  pride : — "Ah, 
you  should  have  come  to  us,"  said  he;   "we're 
the  regiment,  we  are."    "Well,  I  went  with  the 
rest  of  our  men,"  said  Thomas.    "There's  three 
hundred  of  us  volunteered  to  stay  on,  and  we 
all  went  for  the  same  regiment.    Not  but  what 
I'm  saying  yours  is  a  good  regiment,"  he  added 


250  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

with  grave  courtesy.  This  loosed  the  Cor- 
poral's tongue,  and  he  discanted  on  the  virtues 
of  the  regiment  and  the  merits  of  the  officers. 
It  has  been  written  that  Thomas  is  devoid  of 
esprit  de  corps,  because  of  the  jerkiness  of  the 
arrangements  under  which  he  now  serves.  If 
this  be  true,  he  manages  to  conceal  his  feelings 
very  well ;  for  he  speaks  most  fluently  in  praise 
of  his  own  regiment;  and,  for  all  his  youth, 
has  a  keen  appreciation  of  the  merits  of  his 
officers.  Go  to  him  when  his  heart  is  opened, 
and  hear  him  going  through  the  roll  of  the  sub- 
alterns, by  a  grading  totally  unknown  in  the 
Army  List,  and  you  will  pick  up  something 
worth  the  hearing.  Thomas,  with  the  Burma 
fever  on  him,  tried  to  cut  in,  from  time  to  time, 
with  stories  of  his  officers  and  what  they  had 
done  "when  we  was  marchin'  all  up  and  down 
Burma,"  but  the  little  Corporal  went  on  gaily. 
They  made  a  curious  contrast — these  two 
types.  The  lathy,  town-bred  Thomas  with 
hock-bottle  shoulders,  a  little  education,  and  a 
keen  desire  to  get  more  medals  and  stripes ;  and 
the  little,  deep-chested,  bull-necked  Corporal 
brimming  over  with  vitality  and  devoid  of  any 
ideas  beyond  the  "regiment."  And  the  end  of 
both  lives,  in  all  likelihood,  would  be  a  nameless 
grave  in  some  cantonment  burying-ground, 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  251 

with,  if  the  case  were  specially  interesting  and 
the  Regimental  Doctor  had  a  turn  for  the  pen, 
an  obituary  notice  in  the  Indian  Medical 
Journal.  It  was  an  unpleasant  thought. 

From  the  Army  to  the  Navy  is  a  perfectly 
natural  transition,  but  one  hardly  to  be  expected 
in  the  heart  of  India.  Dawn  showed  the  rail- 
way carriage  full  of  riotous  boys,  for  the  Agra 
and  Mount  Abu  schools  had  broken  up  for  holi- 
days. Surely  it  was  natural  enough  to  ask  a 
child — not  a  boy,  but  a  child — whether  he  was 
going  home  for  the  holidays ;  and  surely  it  was 
a  crushing,  a  petrifying  thing,  to  hear  in  a  clear 
treble,  tinged  with  icy  hauteur — "No !  I'm  on 
leave.  I'm  a  midshipman."  Two  "officers  of 
Her  Majesty's  Navy" — mids  of  a  man-o'-war 

in  Bombay were  going  Up-country  on  ten 

days'  leave!  They  had  not  travelled  much 
more  than  twice  round  the  world;  but  they 
should  have  printed  the  fact  on  a  label.  They 
chattered  like  daws,  and  their  talk  was  as  a 
whiff  of  fresh  air  from  the  open  sea,  while  the 
train  ran  eastward  under  the  Aravalis.  At  that 
hour  their  lives  were  bound  up  in  and  made 
glorious  by  the  hope  of  riding  a  horse  when 
they  reached  their  journey's  end.  Much  had 
they  seen  "cities  and  men,"  and  the  artless  way 
in  which  they  interlarded  their  conversation 


252  LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

with  allusions  to  "one  of  these  shore-going 
chaps  you  see"  was  delicious.  They  had  no 
cares,  no  fears,  no  servants,  and  an  unlimited 
stock  of  wonder  and  admiration  for  everything 
they  saw,  from  the  "cute  little  well-scoops"  to 
a  herd  of  deer  grazing  on  the  horizon.  It  was 
not  until  they  had  opened  their  young  hearts 
with  infantine  abandon  that  the  listener  could 
guess  from  the  incidental  argot  where  these 
pocket-Ulysseses  had  travelled.  South  Afri- 
can, Norwegian,  and  Arabian  words  were  used 
to  help  out  the  slang  of  Haslar,  and  a  copious 
vocabulary  of  shipboard  terms,  complicated 
with  modern  Greek.  As  free  from  self -con- 
sciousness  as  children,  as  ignorant  as  beings 
from  another  planet  of  the  Anglo-Indian  life 
into  which  they  were  going  to  dip  for  a  few 
days,  shrewd  and  observant  as  befits  men  of 
the  world  who  have  authority,  and  neat-handed 
and  resourceful  as — blue- jackets,  they  were  a 
delightful  study,  and  accepted  freely  and 
frankly  the  elaborate  apologies  tendered  to 
them  for  the  unfortunate  mistake  about  the 
"holidays."  The  roads  divided  and  they  went 
their  way;  and  there  was  a  shadow  after  they 
had  gone,  for  the  Globe-Trotter  said  to  his 
wife: — "What  I  like  about  Jeypore" — accent 
on  the  first  syllable,  if  you  please — "is  its  char- 


LETTERS  OF  MARQUE  253 

acteristic  easternness."     And  the  Globe-Trot- 
ter's wife  said,  "Yes !    It  is  purely  Oriental !" 

This  was  Jeypore  with  the  gas-jets  and  the 
water-pipes  as  was  shown  at  the  beginning  of 
these  trivial  letters ;  and  the  Globe-T rotter  and 
his  wife  had  not  been  to  Amber.  Joyful 
thought !  They  had  not  seen  the  soft  splendour 
of  Udaipur,  the  night-mare  of  Chitor,  the  grim 
power  of  Jodhpur  and  the  virgin  beauty  of 
Boondi — fairest  of  all  places  that  the  English- 
man had  set  eyes  on.  The  Globe-Trotter  was 
great  in  the  matter  of  hotels  and  food,  but  he 
had  not  lain  under  the  shadow  of  a  tonga  in 
soft  warm  sand,  eating  cold  pork  with  a  pocket- 
knife  and  thanking  Providence  who  put  sweet- 
water  streams  where  wayfarers  wanted  them. 
He  had  not  drunk  out  the  brilliant  cold-weather 
night  in  the  company  of  a  King  of  loafers,  a 
grimy  scallawag  with  a  six  days'  beard  and 
an  unholy  knowledge  of  native  States.  He  had 
attended  service  in  cantonment  churches;  but 
he  had  not  known  what  it  was  to  witness  the 
simple  solemn  ceremonial  in  the  dining-room 
of  a  far  away  Residency,  when  all  the  English 
folk  within  a  hundred-mile  circuit  bowed  their 
heads  before  the  God  of  the  Christians.  He 
had  blundered  about  temples  of  strange  deities 
with  a  guide  at  his  elbow;  but  he  had  not 


254          LETTERS  OF  MARQUE 

known  what  it  was  to  attempt  conversation 
with  a  temple  dancing-girl  (not  such  an  one.as 
Edwin  Arnold  invented),  and  to  be  rewarded 
for  a  misturned  compliment  with  a  deftly 
heaved  bunch  of  marigold  buds  on  his  respect- 
able bosom.  Yes,  he  had  undoubtedly  lost 
much,  and  the  measure  of  his  loss  was  proven 
in  his  estimate  of  the  Orientalism  of  Jeypore. 

But  what  had  he  who  sat  in  judgment  upon 
him  gained  ?  One  perfect  month  of  loaferdom, 
to  be  remembered  above  all  others,  and  the 
night  of  the  visit  to  Chitor,  to  be  remembered 
even  when  the  month  is  forgotten.  Also  the 
sad  knowledge  that  of  all  the  fair  things  seen, 
the  inept  pen  gives  but  a  feeble  and  blurred 
picture. 

Let  those  who  have  read  to  the  end,  pardon  a 
hundred  blemishes. 


A     000  061  580     7 


